The wacky financial deals surrounding F1

After Álvaro Parente lost his test seat with Virgin due to a government branch refusing to pay a previously agreed 2 million euros (some sources claim 3 million), now the rumour around is that Vitaly Petrov’s place in Renault isn’t as solid as it seemed. Will Buxton tells in his blog a fairly surreal story about Vitaly and his finances. It is widely known that he got that place thanks to an agreed fee of 15 million euros (yes, that’s an abysmally huge amount of money), and Will claims now in his story that the fee will be paid in two instalments – 7.5M€ in March, and the other 7.5M€ in June. Now, that would be alright if it wasn’t for the source of the money. Vitaly’s father told the russian media that he could not get sponsorship from any major russian company, and had to resort to a last minute extreme bank loan of 7.5M€ to cover the first instalment – a fee that is agreed but that Vitaly’s father hasn’t yet received, which could result in nasty consequences for Vitaly’s place in F1 if it doesn’t come in time.

Vitaly Petrov in Renault colors

This comes off as utterly irresponsible – take a 7.5M€ debt to get your son into racing, without any guarantees you’d make any money from it? It could also be a “pity me” bullshit story to attract more sympathy for Vitaly among potential new sponsors, but it still comes off as weird and desperate, even under that logic. With Formula 1 going back into the paydrivers world, expect more similar stories in the coming months. Drivers will lose seats on the basis of missing payments, guaranteed.

Meanwhile, there are still no decent news about Campos Racing, which has been linked to a partial or full buyout by Tony Teixeira for a long time now – without any official denials. That would be the same man who left A1GP in a state of insolvency, and who still owes money to Ferrari. Desperate much?

I have another point to make. After a decade in which Bernie Ecclestone successfully conned several governments to get them to pay extreme fees to hold races, supposedly for the promotion of tourism and international recognition of the said countries, it appears the new teams like the scheme and want to cash in on it as well. Parente was supposed to have Portuguese tourism money (not a first unfortunately, ask Tiago Monteiro); Petrov has “the sympathy of Putin” – whatever that means; the very dodgy USF1 squad somehow got the Argentinian president to pose along with Windsor and JM Lopéz for pictures, and help fund Lopéz’ seat; Lotus appears to be owned and/or sponsored by a project of the malaysian government; and Ecclestone has recently said that the weird Stefan GP team is solid because it has got serbian government funding – confirmed to him directly by the serbian prime minister. All of this for what exactly? I am sure that in a time of economical crisis there are better ways to spend government money than by funding backmarker teams and drivers of unknown merit? Or am I missing something? Is the exposure gained really worth that much?

F1 silly season update

There’s been a few news regarding drivers this past week, most of them about testers/reserve drivers. Whereas test drivers nowadays are almost irrelevant, with the teams being given very little testing miles and their reserve drivers doing almost nothing but some simulator work, it still is important to understand what’s happening in the test driver market because it concerns quite a few important names.

Heidfeld will not be seen on the grid for the first time in 10 years

First, we had the confirmation that Nick Heidfeld will not race this season but instead will be 3rd driver for Mercedes GP. I find this quite sad because Nick is easily more talented than half of the guys on the grid – but he played it risky this off-season and there weren’t seats for everyone. He will be hoping Michael Schumacher’s neck has a relapse, or Michael gets bored of F1 again, or Nico underperforms. I honestly don’t think any of that will happen and I’m not sure Nick has a bright F1 future ahead of him.

Parente's F1 hopes just got a lot more complicated

Over here in Portugal, there are some mexican soap opera scenes following the announcement that Álvaro Parente will not be the tester for Virgin F1 anymore, because the Instituto do Turismo de Portugal (translates to Institute for the Tourism of Portugal, a government branch), will not pay the sponsorship they had agreed to. Both sides – Polaris, the management company that handles Álvaro’s career, and the ITP – have put out heavy press statements. First, Álvaro said the ITP had agreed a deal with Virgin, to be signed after the team’s car launch, but they suddenly backed off from the deal the following day, without ever giving any answers as to why. The ITP countered back to these claims, denying that Virgin signing Álvaro as a driver was a counterpart in the negotiations between ITP and Virgin!

Then today Polaris made another statement, saying the ITP is flat out lying, and publishing an email communication between the ITP and Virgin as proof:

“Dear Jim,

I am glad to inform that the Board of Turismo de Portugal has decided in yesterday’s meeting to move forward regarding a presence in F1, through Virgin Racing and Alvaro Parente project for 2010.

Turismo de Portugal is prepared to invest significantly in this project, not only in helping to put Alvaro Parente driving for Virgin Racing, but also and particularly important to us, in a marketing plan to promote Portugal’s image as a top tourism destination with Virgin’s support. We are confident that a constructive collaboration will help all of us to reach our objectives(…).

Best regards,
Frederico Costa
Vice-President”

Interesting that Polaris has access to communications between Virgin and ITP! I suppose that’s been leaked by someone in one of those parts?

In a way it’s been made some justice, as I wasn’t entirely comfortable with my government paying 2 million euros for a driver to go “test” in simulators – that can’t possibly be good value for money. However the whole situation reeks of utter unprofessionalism, and it is very bad for Álvaro’s career to now gain a reputation of being a paydriver whose sponsors may not pay – fully undeserved for this talented driver. It appears that Virgin had in their contract with Álvaro an option for him to become race driver in 2011, which could’ve been a great open door into F1, and now he’s suddenly in a much worse position. He probably won’t even do GP2, as the main seats are almost all taken. Polaris realises this big problem, and that’s why they’re being so aggressive. They’ve gone to the point of making Cristiano Ronaldo (also managed by Polaris) say some words to the press supporting Álvaro: that’s how important Álvaro is for them!

This man will be happier - di Resta will drive the Force India on race weekend Fridays

But now onto the good news – another highly talented driver, the scot Paul di Resta, will be Force India’s test driver this season and will run in Friday free practice sessions. That route went well for Vitantonio Liuzzi, and Paul will be hoping to follow his footsteps on the way to a Formula 1 race seat. Remember that this is the man that beat Vettel to a F3 title on equal equipment.

Vallés, the 4th spanish driver on the grid?

And finally, there is some rumours coming out of Spain that Adrian Vallés, the reigning Superleague Formula champion for Liverpool, will be the 2nd driver for USF1. I don’t think Adrian is any amazing but I feared they’d sign someone far worse! José Maria Lopez, who’d be his team-mate, has hinted at that this deal is true.

Having luck and being at the right place at the right time is still so important for every driver’s career…

The new Renault livery, driver, and maybe a car

As expected, Vitaly Petrov is going to be Robert Kubica’s team-mate (making it an unprecedented all eastern-europe lineup!), and the new Renault is yellow, black and red:

I was going to write a long wall of text about Petrov’s background and career, but GP Week journalist Will Buxton already put it perfectly on his blog, so better just quote him:

The Vyborg Rocket, as he is known in Russia, (because he comes from Vyborg and is pretty quick) or Alex from “A Clockwork Orange” as he is called by others (because he looks like Alex from “A Clockwork Orange), began his racing career in 2001 in the Lada Cup championship in his homeland before making the switch to European-based single seaters in 2003 when he took part in the Formula Renault UK Winter Cup. He continued in various Formula Renault championship in 2003 and 2004 for EuroNova Racing before returning to Russia for a bit more Lada action in 2005.

Come 2006, Petrov was back in Europe and back with EuroNova, winning a race in the Euro3000 championship before making a mid-season switch to complete the 2006 GP2 season with DPR, making his debut in the F1 feeder category at Hockenheim.

For 2007 he linked up with Campos Racing in GP2, partnering Giorgio Pantano and the duo helped turn the back-of-the-field team into a regular points scorer and, by season’s end, race winner. Petrov took his first GP2 win at the season finale in Valencia.

In 2008 Petrov stuck with Campos but struggled to find form. Many suggested he had only shone the season before due to Pantano’s input at the team, and it took the mid-season arrival of Lucas di Grassi to turn the team’s fortunes around. Petrov again won in Valencia, this time at the new street track, but although only taking part in half of the season it was di Grassi who finished the season as the best placed Campos driver.

Last season, Petrov was again racing for Campos, this time as the re-named Barwa Addax team following the squad’s purchase by Alejandro Agag as Adrian Campos went off in search of his F1 team dream. The Russian was teamed with championship favourite Romain Grosjean, and the duo appeared evenly matched in the opening rounds. When Grosjean was promoted to a full-time f1 race seat at mid-season, Petrov became the team’s main challenger and duly took the fight to Nico Hulkenberg at ART. Although Hulkenberg was quite clearly in a class of his own, Petrov had some impressive races, once again looking majestic in Valencia.

It does seem interesting that in his last three seasons in GP2, Petrov has been teamed with three drivers who were not considered good enough for Renault, but who all beat him in equal machinery. Pantano tested for Renault in its former incarnation as Benetton but was never given the shot at a race seat, di Grassi was a long suffering RDD reserve but never afforded the opportunity with the big boys and was passed over for both Piquet and Grosjean, and finally the aforementioned Grosjean, who was collateral damage in Renault’s disastrous 2009.

What, then, stands Petrov out? Well, there are probably about 10 million very good reasons why Renault should have picked Petrov. I have heard that his sign on fee was in the region of $15 million, which equates to around £8 million or €10 million. He has long been backed by the Russian government, and stories over the last few weeks also linked Gazprom (a one-time Minardi sponsor) with Petrov’s push for an F1 seat, alongside some other pretty heavy-weight Russian companies.

But I don’t think this is all about cash, although I’m sure it can’t have hindered his chances. Petrov is quick. Whether he’s super quick I’m yet to really figure out, but I know for sure he’s not Hulkenberg quick. As such I doubt very much that he will set the world on fire. Then again, I didn’t think Kobayashi looked much cop in GP2, and look how exciting he was in his first F1 races! Make no mistake, however. Petrov is no idiot. He’s not some Take Inoue who is going to tool around half a week off the pace and crash into the safety car. He’s a racer, and a hard one at that.

I have also been told Vitaly never did karts, unlike most F1 drivers who spent their entire childhood and teenager years doing it – that is a big handicap. Another important fact about Vitaly is that he will be the first russian Formula 1 driver ever!

Back to Renault and the car, well, there is some contradicting reports as to what car is in the pictures. Some people say it’s the 2009 R29, some people say it’s the brand new R30, some people say it’s the old car with a new front wing, and some people say it’s the new car with the old front wing! My observational skills aren’t very good so I can’t say for sure what the hell it is. What’s for sure, is that it looks ugly and blocky just like last year’s, and that we’ll see the real car tomorrow testing on the track.

As for the livery, it’s nice to see they’re trying to come back to the traditional Renault colors, as whatever they did could only be an improvement over the horrible ING-sponsored cars of the past 3 years, but I think they didn’t pull it off very well. There are several things wrong with that:

• There’s too much yellow, too little black.

• The red Total-sponsored endplates – that third colour clashes horribly with the others. Now, it does give some nice exposure to Total…

• The “barcode” on the shark fin looks clumsy.

• The green stripe on the tyres – not Renault’s fault, everyone will be forced to use that, but it looks very wrong when put against car colours like this.

I will still support them as from the current crop of drivers I like Robert Kubica the most and want him to win, but that is an ugly thing…

Williams signs Bottas for the future

Besides McLaren’s car, another important news on the F1 world today was the signing of finnish rising star Valtteri Bottas by Williams for a testing/reserve seat. Valtteri, 20 years old, has been doing car racing for 3 years and his performance has been very impressive: he started out in 2007 in the Northern European Formula Renault 2.0 championship (NEC) and was 3rd in it, getting 2 podiums in his very first race weekend and finishing the season with 2 wins. The following year he stayed in the NEC and utterly dominated it with 12 wins in 16 races (something the portuguese will remember as “our” António Felix da Costa was his team-mate and finished 2nd to Bottas in the championship, in a learning year), and at the same time did the more prestigious FRenault 2.0 Eurocup – winning the championship as well, with a small advantage over aussie Daniel Ricciardo.

Bottas driving his F3 car on the way to a Masters victory in Zandvoort

Last season he moved to the F3 Euroseries, which is one of the most competitive categories below F1 and has been feeding many drivers to it for years, driving for the leading team ART. He was 3rd and couldn’t match his team-mate Jules Bianchi’s superb pace over the year, but that was quite okay as you couldn’t expect more from a rookie season; Bottas won the most important race of the season anyway, the F3 Masters. He will stay there for another F3 season in 2010 and at the moment you’d have to tip him as the big favourite for the title.

The association with Williams will do him good. In the last few years the team has invested in Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg when youngsters (both ART drivers in the junior series!) and properly trained them all the way up to giving them a Formula 1 race seat. This guy is likely to go the same path.

López confirmed at USF1

I’m about one day late on these news, as it was announced last night on Argentina, strangely with the personal involvement of the argentinian president! José Maria López is, finally, after months of rumours, the first official USF1 driver, thanks to the nice pot of cash he brings for Peter Windsor’s pockets.

José Maria López, racing driver, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the argentinian president

López has faded away from the international spotlight in recent years, but was at a time thought to be a promising prospect when he did the junior formulas. He won Italian FRenault 2.0 in 2002 ahead of Robert Kubica; and moved to the quicker Formula Renault V6 cars the following year, winning the championship again. That put him in F3000 and as part of the Renault driver development programme, including a role testing their F1 cars, but then the results stalled. He was 6th in his first season of F3000, the following year he was 9th in the series now transformed into GP2, and finally got a disappointing 10th in the 2006 season. Renault shut him off, promoting Nelsinho Piquet to F1 instead (who had better GP2 results), and he went to back to his country to compete in their national touring cars series called TC2000 – where’s he been ever since, getting back some success through winning the 2008 and 2009 championships, and building a big fanbase at home.

A wild battle between Lopez (in the black car) and Bruni (in the silver car) in GP2, back in 2006

While his open-wheel career has all the classic signs of a driver who ran out of talent when he reached a higher level of competition, I am willing to at least give him a chance to see how he does in F1. We have seen a recent case of a driver looking crap in GP2 and then surprising in F1 – Kamui Kobayashi. It’s not impossible López could do the same. After all this is a driver who had success in everything he drove except for one category, could’ve simply been the case of the cars not suiting him; and it has to be said the teams he drove for, CMS, DAMS and SuperNova, were not front runners.

This is what López has been driving in recent years in Argentina

A driver like this shining in F1 is a rare possibility, but a possibility – he is going to have to do something special though as the USF1 car is unlikely to be competitive, the team being brand new, built on an unproven business model, clearly behind schedule and lacking known respected technical staff. I wish him good luck.

F1 pre-season kicks off tomorrow

Okay, Mercedes are only going to show off a livery tomorrow, but it’s the first glimpse as to how will the Formula 1 grid look like next season. Things are going to get more interesting later in the week, as McLaren, Ferrari, Sauber and Renault will show off their new machines – as I wrote before. Expect pictures of the new Merc livery everywhere in the internet tomorrow morning.

This photoshop released by Merc recently should resemble what we're going to see tomorrow at their launch

Meanwhile, since I’ve been busy this week and felt like doing other things in the weekend, here’s a quick recap of what happened this week in Formula 1 (not much). Alguersuari was finally confirmed at Toro Rosso, ending nonsense rumours that Bortolotti or Fisichella would move there. The argentinian press has yet again said José Maria Lopez is right about to sign for USF1, and the international press has now followed on their lead, but it’s still not officially confirmed (should be this week). No word yet on who will be his team-mate, with the second USF1 remaining the most mysterious of this silly season.

José Maria López, a couple years back when he was a Renault tester

The shocker of the week was Nick Heidfeld’s manager confirming he’ll be the test/reserve driver of Mercedes, and then denying it. There are some rumours saying he is still in contention for the much wanted Renault seat, but these statements by his manager are very worrying news as it could well mean he does have a contract with Merc, which can’t be announced yet (perhaps tomorrow). I think it’s completely mad that a driver of Nick’s caliber might not have a seat, but he played it risky this silly season and these are the consequences. We get paydrivers instead, a sign of the crisis…

The goofy-bearded Heidfeld is at a serious risk of not making the F1 grid this year

Speaking of paydrivers, the man who is thought to be #1 on Renault’s list right now is the russian rookie Vitaly Petrov, who comes with a large chequebook. Will be interesting to see if this means Robert Kubica will drive a car with big fat “RUSSIA” letters on it, as Petrov used to race in GP2 – the polish fans on the forums are already mad about this possibility! Petrov was also rumoured to go to Campos, but from the spanish squad there have been very little news on the press recently. I have, however, heard that things are not well with them, and they’re unlikely to make the grid. This would be an absolute shame as more cars on the grid are always nice, and because it would put yet more F1 people out of a job, one of which is Bruno Senna. The brazilian driver would get shafted by the second consecutive year, since he was a strong contender for the Honda seat last year.

Vitaly Petrov raced with "Russia" adverts in GP2

By the way, back to cars and liveries – Lucas di Grassi has said the new Virgin F1 car will be black, a color we have missed in F1 (old black Arrowses and Lotuses were awesome!). And I’ve not spoken the truth with the first paragraph of this article, as the Mercedes livery is NOT the first glimpse into how F1 cars will look like this year. Because photos emerged, of Fernando Alonso doing some promotional work for Santander, racing a 2010-liveried last years Ferrari…

I’m not sure if I like it or not, it’s too many Santander adverts? The car shape doesn’t help it. I’ve added a poll to see what you people think of this livery, despite the fact the blog doesn’t really have any regular readers at this moment – my perseverance isn’t fading just yet.