Bianchi and Parente shine in Bahrain qualy

GP2 Asia is racing tomorrow and Saturday on Bahrain, today was the qualifying session. Jules Bianchi again shown an excellent degree of adaptation to GP2 machines by putting his ART car on pole, albeit by a mere 0.004 seconds over championship leader Davide Valsecchi. The experienced Luca Filippi and Javier Villa will divide the second row – both also putting times within half a tenth of Bianchi in what must’ve been a very entertaining session.

This is Jules Bianchi. Take note of this name as you'll hear it a lot in the coming years.

Portuguese Álvaro Parente made a great comeback to GP2 putting his Coloni in 5th place, a rare sight for the italian squad. There are still no news as for what he will do during the main season, with the rumours around mentioning either a seat in Superleague Formula or in GT racing. If those are indeed the options I am hoping he’ll do Superleague as that still has a good degree of visibility, whereas GT would certainly mean the end of his open-wheel career. But unfortunately the Superleague rumours are a couple weeks old and might not mean much anymore.

Race 1 tomorrow is at the slightly inconvenient time of 9:40 AM, live on Eurosport 2.

Qualy times from Autosport:

Pos Driver Team Time Gap
1. Jules Bianchi ART 1m43.474s
2. Davide Valsecchi iSport 1m43.478s + 0.004s
3. Javier Villa Arden 1m43.519s + 0.045s
4. Luca Filippi Meritus 1m43.523s + 0.049s
5. Alvaro Parente Coloni 1m43.714s + 0.240s
6. Oliver Turvey iSport 1m43.818s + 0.344s
7. Giacomo Ricci DPR 1m43.918s + 0.444s
8. Christian Vietoris DAMS 1m44.086s + 0.612s
9. Charles Pic Arden 1m44.172s + 0.698s
10. Sergio Perez Addax 1m44.246s + 0.772s
11. Sam Bird ART 1m44.253s + 0.779s
12. Edoardo Piscopo DAMS 1m44.338s + 0.864s
13. Max Chilton Addax 1m44.617s + 1.143s
14. Michael Herck DPR 1m44.671s + 1.197s
15. Alexander Rossi Meritus 1m44.713s + 1.239s
16. Yelmer Buurman Ocean 1m44.724s + 1.250s
17. Vladimir Arabadzhiev Rapax 1m44.759s + 1.285s
18. Adrian Zaugg Trident 1m44.781s + 1.307s
19. Daniele Zampieri Rapax 1m45.079s + 1.605s
20. Will Bratt Coloni 1m45.320s + 1.846s
21. Fabio Leimer Ocean 1m45.371s + 1.897s
22. Josef Kral Super Nova 1m45.424s + 1.950s
23. Jake Rosenzweig Super Nova 1m45.980s + 2.506s
24. Plamen Kralev Trident 1m47.243s + 3.769s

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…