After all, it’s de la Rosa

Disregard everything I said last week about Fisichella (#1 / #2), and rather believe the post of the previous week. The BMW Sauber team (it’s still officially known by this name) has just announced a deal with Pedro de la Rosa to race this season, to be a team-mate to japanese youngster Kamui Kobayashi.

Sauber's new driver

I’m afraid this leaves them with a bit of a weak lineup – a 38 year-old guy that never looked like a front-runner even at his best; and an almost-rookie whose potential is still unclear, his F1 performances last year looked promising but his GP2 credentials (or lack of) are worrying. The most annoying thing (for us, the fans) is that Pedro isn’t a good barometer to Kamui’s speed as he’s been sitting on McLaren’s bench for many years and nobody can know for sure if that has affected his pace or not. The upside, for Sauber, is that they get a nice mix of youth and experience, with Pedro being well known as one of the best testing and development drivers out there.

I wouldn’t bet real money on this, but my feeling right now is that Kobayashi is more likely to beat the spaniard, than the opposite happening.

Last week of January will bring the new F1 cars

We are right at the middle of January now, and still no new drivers or cars in F1. With testing starting in two weeks time, all of this is going to have to be sorted quickly. For now, a couple teams have already revealed when they will present their new cars to the press, and/or when the car will run for the first time:

Launches
25th January – Mercedes
28th January – Ferrari
29th January – McLaren
31st January – Renault, Sauber
12th February – Lotus
(please notice that the Mercedes team launch will only feature the new livery on the old Brawn GP 2009 car, and will not unveil their new car)

First tests for each team
1-3 February at Valencia – Renault, Sauber, Mercedes, McLaren, Ferrari
10-13 February at Jerez – Force India, Red Bull, Virgin
17-20 February at Jerez – Lotus
25-28 February at Barcelona – ?
??? February at Barber Motorsports Park – USF1

So this means an hectic last week of January where a lot of pictures of cars will appear and will be over-analysed, then another interesting day at Valencia the 1st of February. That doesn’t sit very well with me, as I predict that week to be a very busy week at work since I have to deliver a project on that same day…

It’s interesting to note that Red Bull will skip the first week at Valencia, which doesn’t seem very much like what a top team should do, but they did it last year and it’s not like it worked wrong for them. The lack of news about Campos remains worrying, but then again the respected Williams haven’t announced anything yet, and neither did Toro Rosso, a team which has been often forgotten this off-season – they have a very big task in fully developing their own car, something that italian factory hasn’t done for about the past 5 years!

Meanwhile, news about McLaren have given yet another hint about the Sauber seat – Pedro de la Rosa is confirmed to be going to test the Mac in the 1st of February, so that must mean he’s not joining the swiss squad then? Like I said friday, this week’s favourite man for the job has been Giancarlo Fisichella, who does also have a Ferrari contract, but, unlike Pedro, has been given the go-ahead to race for another team.

More developments about Sauber

There are some noises today about Pedro de la Rosa having denied he’s moving to Sauber. This seems to be a matter of interpretation, as there’s also some spanish guys in the forums saying the only thing he told to a spanish newspaper is that “he hasn’t signed yet”. The name of Giancarlo Fisichella also keeps on appearing related to Sauber as their other alternative, which would make some sense as they’re racing with Ferrari engines this season and Ferrari would prefer their 3rd driver to race for another team this year, to avoid another Badoer-like fiasco. Whichever way it goes, Pedro, Giancarlo or anyone else, Peter Sauber made it clear that Nick Heidfeld isn’t going there and that still makes most of the stuff I wrote yesterday valid.

Sauber's only win in F1 came in Canada 2008, with Robert Kubica driving and BMW as the team owners.

Meanwhile, there’s another interesting story about Sauber that popped up in Autosport today. The team still hasn’t asked for an official name change and has no intention of doing it soon, which is a little weird. This might be for one of two reasons:

a) Recent history shows that F1 isn’t very consistent when it comes to giving money to new teams. Unless my memory is failing, I believe last year when Honda changed to Brawn, they lost all of their TV/prize money achieved during the previous season. Last month, Brawn changed to Mercedes and apparently there was a special deal to allow them to keep the cash. Sauber might be waiting to see which of these scenarios will apply to him, and trying to get a special deal like Mercedes.

b) They might be delaying it to see if they can sell the naming rights of the team to a sponsor. With Petronas having recently moved to Mercedes, I’m not sure they have sponsorship lined up and they might be forced into more desperate tactics like this to attract some.

At the moment they are still officially “BMW Sauber”, and, while their rivals Renault have sold the team and kept the name, it’s pretty much certain they will change it before Bahrain.

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.