F1 Fanatic

He has obviously Impressed both RedBull and Torro Rosso enough in the pre season test and first practice session for them both to want to give him some race experience. HRT could do with finishing as high up the championship order as possible for financial reasons and Ricciardo (who could be the next best thing….ya never know)is probably a better option to help them do that than Karthikeyan.

NK will still race in India giving them the attention and financial rewards of running an Indian in his home GP whilst getting a better driver for their money.

It’s not like HRT are known for either driver loyalty or following an ethos of driver continuation as a baseline for car development. Does anyone really think that Kartikeyan is being considered for a contract renewal based on his performances this year?

Prisoner Monkeys, the fact that you didn’t even bother to reply to my post is interesting…

Anyway, you’re saying you don’t like him because he hasn’t proven himself to be likable, but at the same time you’re able to dislike him – despite the fact he hasn’t proven himself to be unlikable. Erm… what?

You’re obviously very intelligent, but sometimes I wonder if you’re having an opinion just for the sake of having an opinion, even if it doesn’t make sense or happen to be what you believe in.

I think you’re being way too harsh on him. I’m not sure if you’re referring to me when you say people “keep telling you how fabulous he is”, but I can only assume you’re not because I never said anything like that. I don’t think he’s any quicker than any other rookie, but intense dislike for someone purely because people overrate him is so silly and unjustified. If you intensely dislike the people that tell you he’s “a sure thing for success”, then fair enough – you’ve given us a reason. But it just seems you’re trying to be different to everyone else to start a debate, you know, like a (dare I say it?) troll.

It probably has something to do with the fact that I have a resident who needs to be signed out of her room before she leaves my college tomorrow.

But you found time to select who you’d like to reply to. I’m not buying that.

It is hard to believe unless confirmed,
who will sponsor hrt if Karthikeyan is replaced?
most of hrt’s sponsor are karthikeyan’s backer.

If he does replace Karthikeyan, which I don’t believe, it would be the wrong decision in my opnion. No driver should forge ahead so much. Vettel did in 2006 and he proved he was ready for F1, but we still know too little about him to know if he would be competitive in F1.
Also, if he did enter F1 and was competitive, that would ruin Liuzzi’s career!

@Prisoner Monkeys

Ricciardo has results to support his potential for a Formula 1 drive; Gutierrez does not (but Valencia was a start).

Gutierrez has won the GP3 championship last year and now in GP2 has won a race (something his team mate, the greatly-rated Bianchi, Ferrari’s reserve driver, still hasn’t managed, in the Main Series). Ricciardo has arrived 2nd in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series. I think Gutierrez has more results to support his F1 drive than Ricciardo. This doesn’t mean I don’t rate Ricciardo, just that Ricciardo has no rights on debuting before Gutierrez, based on the results they have achieved up to now.

I’m surprised it was Narain that got the boot and not Liuzzi (not performance-wise, though) because Tata (Narian’s primary sponsor) is virtually the title sponsor for HRT. Likewise, Liuzzi is a much better benchmark for Ricciardo’s performance, so Red Bull must have payed a lot of money to overpower the Tata influence.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that Red Bull are so desperate to give Ricciardo a seat due to fear of him losing his coveted Formula Renault 3.5 Series campaign to Robert Wickens, Kevin Korjus, or even more embarassingly, Jean-Eric Vergne (a fellow Red Bull junior stablemate who has gotten far less testing oppurtuninties and exposure than his Australian competitor). This would be the third time Red Bull management pulled a driver mid-season from the World Series (following Vettel and Alguersuari).

This is a bit it a gamble for Ricciardo. If he can’t compete relatively well against Liuzzi then STR and RBR will have their answer.