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…

Here’s the new Mercedes paintjob

Let’s have a look at it (picture taken from Joe Saward’s blog):

The new Mercedes F1 livery for 2010

A lot of people have complained that the lighting on that presentation was completely messed up, and the car sure as hell looks a lot more white in there, compared to this mock-up picture they also have released:

And also in a couple other pictures from the presentation itself:

I think it definitely looks very cool when the lighting is not too bright, it’d be a bit shit and bland if it ran under the super flash lights it seems to be under in the first picture. Your guess is as good as mine as to which way it will look like in the race track, but silver clearly beats white here. I was actually hoping for a little bit more of Petronas turquoise, like the earlier photoshop, but it’s alright this way. A particular feature I enjoy is the big fat numbers both in the nose and in the rear wing, which are somewhat similar to Merc’s 1950s cars, it’s a nice touch after the past decade, where driver numbers become smaller and smaller to the point of non-existent. Another interesting detail is that the car will be named MGP W01 (Mercedes GP Wagon 01), instead of the previously rumoured RB 01 in honour of Ross Brawn -  that had annoyed some fans, given the Red Bull cars are already named RB-something. But please be aware that the car in the pictures is last year’s BGP 001 painted in this year’s colours, not the brand new MGP W01!

An important thing to note is that the only drivers seen in Mercedes overalls in Stuttgart today were Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg – Nick Heidfeld was not hanging around, thankfully. That might not mean anything, Nick could still go there as a test driver, but I’m cheering for him to grab the remaining race seat at Renault as he deserves.

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.

Rumours that De La Rosa has signed for Sauber

This is Pedro, focusing hard while sitting in a McLaren

With testing starting in less than a month, the F1 teams have to sign drivers for the last few remaining seats ASAP and I expect that we’ll hear some news from all of them in the first two weeks of January. The news today are that veteran spanish driver Pedro de la Rosa has signed for Sauber, where he will partner Kamui Kobayashi, according to F1network.net. I’m not sure of the credibility of this website, but it seems consistent enough with a recent interview by team owner Peter Sauber. From what I could understand from that weird Google translation, Peter himself has confirmed that they have signed a driver, that he is experienced, and that he brings “new knowledge” for the team. Okay, that could be a few different guys (Peter himself says they had a list of 6 experienced drivers to choose from), but F1Network seems pretty convinced that it is de la Rosa. Most importantly, this definitely rules out Nick Heidfeld.

And Nick is probably the big remaining piece of the Silly Season puzzle. Nick took a bit of a gamble this winter, refusing to sign for anyone until the McLaren seat was definitely not his. It wasn’t, but Mac’s shock signing of Jenson Button opened up a place in Mercedes, and many people thought Nick would go there then. Only for Merc to pull their own big surprise late last month, by bringing Michael Schumacher back from retirement… It was an absolutely worthy gamble for Nick, a talented driver who has been stuck in sub-par cars for an entire decade, and who has got to be tired of waiting for a chance. Yet another year on a midfield team will add nothing to his career.

Now those chances are gone, it’s time for damage limitation. He won’t be in a top team this year. So why hasn’t he remained at Sauber then? He’s driven many seasons for them and almost always very well. They’d surely want him, unless they were really desperate for money. F1Network is however convinced that, even if De La Rosa brings some 4 million of sponsorship, that wasn’t the deciding factor for his signing. So Sauber are not that desperate, and given that it’s unlikely anyone would pick Pedro over Nick for talent alone, Nick wasn’t even on their list. Only one thing adds up then – Nick’s wasn’t in the list because he’s going to Renault.

The Renault seat is certainly the most desirable at the moment, even if traditionally being a #2 in Renault was always a bad idea – not any more, with Flavio Briatore gone. And while on theory it wouldn’t make much sense to put Nick next to Robert Kubica again (when they were together at BMW Sauber, their different driving styles meant the car would never be right for both of them at the same time), it’s got to be their best option. Let’s look at the alternatives reported by the press: belgian youngsters Jerome D’Ambrosio and Bertrain Baguette, both promising but unproven; chinese youngster Ho-Ping Tung, a marketing dream but lacking the necessary talent; former stars Jacques Villeneuve and Ralf Schumacher, good back in the days but long past their best; Franck Montagny who is french and mildly talented but who has also been far from F1 for a while; or they could simply retain Romain Grosjean, who was expected to shine last year but was a bit of a failure. The last rumours concerning Renault are that they’re trying to decide between Heidfeld and Grosjean – while I like Grosjean and I’m annoyed at how Renault have handled his career, if this is the choice, they’ve got to pick Nick…

There are other implications from the de la Rosa move to Sauber, meaning this rules him out from joining Campos or USF1 as previously rumoured, but that had already been expected for a while. Back to Sauber, what it seems to me is that they are in a severely weakened position compared to last year. As if losing the BMW backing wasn’t bad enough, the new pair of drivers is certainly worse. Kobayashi is exciting but still a big mistery, while de la Rosa is old, has been out of the races for a while, and wasn’t even all that quick back then anyway (although competent). The upside of signing Pedro is that he’s apparently very very good in the technical department, for that McLaren seemingly paid him more than some teams pay their race drivers. And he brings McLaren secrets, maybe even Ferrari secrets… remember a certain scandal a couple years ago?

A reminder – this is all just speculation based on sources of unknown credibility. For all I know Sauber could be presenting some other driver to the press tomorrow.