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I find it very hard to imagine that Marko would ever want to give a seat to someone who Red Bull had dropped or someone who had rejected them. Can’t see it happening at all.
da Costa came in last year with no championship pressure and because those results weren’t viewed in that context by many the expectations on him became completely unrealistic – as this year has proven. He’s a very good driver but his qualifying and overall consistency could do with some work.
Given the alleged gaping chasm in pricetag between FR3.5 and GP2, I’m pretty sure which series Felix da Costa is doing was not a particularly big factor for the majority of drivers. The only new driver confirmed to be doing GP2 so far is Abt, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t challenge da Costa on pace last year – he overtook him for a win! For all the recent hype about FR3.5, it still hasn’t had a champion promoted to an F1 race seat since Kubica.
It’s not shaping up to be a classic field, but so far I’d say it’s looking better than last year. A couple of decent drivers carrying on with good teams, and hopefully a few promising rookies as well.
Do you reckon Caterham will keep Rossi in their development programme after this year, Keith? I’d be surprised personally, after him being shown up in FR3.5. He’s the right nationality, but they didn’t end up running Chandhok in the Indian race despite popular belief that they would.
Agree with those saying that the Red Bull young drivers won’t be in GP2, they haven’t bothered with it for years so I don’t see why they’d start now.
Aaro Vainio is part of Nicolas Todt’s stable so I suppose he could be in with a chance at Lotus. He tailed off a bit in GP3 towards the end of the year though.
I doubt Razia, Filippi or Chilton will return for another season. There’s a couple of others that really should be moving on too, but they might not see it the same way!
Will be surprised if Calado can find the money for another year with Lotus, sadly.
I don’t see the point in a Montreal round personally, the championship is too expensive as it is. In fact I don’t think they need any of the Asian rounds except maybe Singapore, and that only for its appeal to sponsors.
I enjoyed GP3 a fair bit more than I have GP2 this year thanks to a complete lack of realistic F1 prospects in the latter. I’ll have a go.
1. Mitch Evans – The final weekend probably (unfairly) overshadows the work he did earlier in the season to get that buffer which allowed him to hold on.
2. Antonio Felix da Costa – shaky start but brilliant from Silverstone onwards.
3. Daniel Abt – Despite the drama of the last weekend, it took a lot of Evans and da Costa’s misfortune (not just at Monza either) for him to get that close. However, still a great rookie year.
4. Aaro Vainio – Unsure about him. Great start to the season but petered out.
5. Patric Niederhauser – solid rookie campaign.Honourable mentions to Ellinas (very quick but erratic) and Laine (unspectacular but very consistent)
James Allen said after Merc GP were formed that their long term targets were Vettel and Hamilton
@GeorgeDaviesF1 But given their form (or lack thereof) since they were formed, it is not outlandish to think that they may have had to settle for slightly more realistic long term targets. I certainly can’t see either of those drivers going to Mercedes any time soon.
@keithcollantine Ok, that’s fine, I’ll start that now.
Minardi has some great candidates:
Best line up: Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber
Worst line up: Paolo Barilla and Alex Yoong
But there is probably a lot of other candidates for the latter :P. I did think Luca Badoer, but I felt bad because I don’t think he was actually that bad in his Minardi days.
There are lots of good names here but I have to pick Stefan Bellof as well. He looked to be an outstanding talent. I remember when I first watched the 1984 Monaco GP, I immediately had to Google him afterwards because I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of him before. His death was a great loss to the sport, imagine how epic the late 80s could have been if he had been around to challenge the like of Mansell, Senna and Prost.
I don’t believe that Ant would spread something like this if he didn’t think the rumours were credible, so I have to believe that it likely is true. I wonder who the pressure is coming from – Tost or Marko?
Mateschitz really needs to do a review into how his teams are being run. Both seem to be a bit of a mess.
I accidently stumbled upon these photos on the F1 website of Red Bull and Toro Rosso filming a very elaborate promo in 2007:
http://www.formula1.com/gallery/other/2007/70.html
Has anyone ever seen the footage which goes with these pictures? Because its the first I’ve ever seen of it. I know this isn’t exactly a thread for requests, but it looks like the film might be quite funny!
I don’t think any F1 sponsors have affected me at all. I’ve drunk a few cans of Red Bull late at night while doing essays, but I was aware of Red Bull from outside F1 as they used to show adverts for the drink all the time on Dutch TV when I lived there. Apart from that? I think I probably own something Puma but thats about it. Oh, and I do occasionally watch CNN!
I chose a Dell laptop over an Acer one last year at PC World, even though I knew Acer was a Ferrari sponsor. Which is just as well, because my friend later told me that her Acer is crap, and PC World only push them because they have a deal with them!
The company my Dad works for used to have a teeny tiny sponsor logo on the bottom rim of the 2008 and 2009 Renaults. I always used to ask him what was the point, as no one could see it! I guess they eventually agreed as they discontinued for this year.
I forgot about the 20 minute Q3 and the “get fuel back” in 2006. That was a bit rubbish, the drivers would just cruise around slowly for the first 10 minutes or so to burn fuel, which was very dull. It needed a bit of tweaking to get the knock out qualifying right!
One lap qualifying in general wasn’t great. It was dull to watch and it was slightly silly when you would have cars running 20 laps down in the races after problems, just to move themselves up the order for the next race.
What was the worst bit about it though was Max would come up with some new genius idea every 6 months or so to “make it more exciting”. Most of which turned out to be terrible.
It did have its advantages though, such as mixed up grids due to changeable weather (though that wasn’t particularly fair and was one of the big issues with it), or drivers blowing their lap. Theoretically it was also meant to be impossible to block someone on a flying lap – though Sato still managed it! Knock out qualifying is much better though, its been one of the best rule changes we’ve had in the past few years.
I hope they keep the current system for a few years yet, in general it was silly how many times qualifying changed in the naughties. Though we did end up with the amusing situation when Ralf Schumacher didn’t understand that he’d been knocked out of a session!
