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?

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…

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.