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.