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…

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.

USF1 pics revealed

The technical magazine website racecar-engineering.com has revealed computerized images of USF1′s first car, plus an interesting short article that talks of many positive details about the design of the car, and the team’s facilities. They also say the car won’t sport a “Stars and Stripes” livery, thankfully.

I admit I have been often skeptical about this new squad, much of it thanks to Peter Windsor often coming off as an annoying car salesman, and hints of unprofessionalism with the material they put to the press, but at this point it’s starting to look like the team is for real.

Last week’s recap

Sorry for the lack of articles lately. I’ve been busy in work, not had much patience in my free time, and there hasn’t been much worth writing a full article about. Anyway, here’s a recap of last week’s news in the F1 world:

- The teams want to ban double diffusers from 2011 onwards. This should be good, as double diffusers weren’t intended by the Overtaking Working Group when they laid out the new aerodynamics rules for 2009, and some said it helped ruin the airflow behind the cars. However Mike Gascoyne has come out saying he doesn’t expect any more overtaking with the ban; and it brings up a cost problem as the teams will have to re-think and re-design many things in the back of the cars yet again for 2011.

- The german newspaper AMuS says there’s a new proposed points system: 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 instead of 25-20-15-10-8-6-5-3-2-1. I like it as it has a smoother mathematical progression and because there’s a bigger difference between 1st and 2nd place, which should place more incentive on risk-taking over conservative racing. There’s also talk of points for pole position and fastest lap – of that I’m not a fan because I’ve seen it in other categories such as GP2, and all it brought was more complicated scenarios rather than improving the racing.

- Silly season still goes on, without new driver announcements. Swiss sources insist de la Rosa is certain at Sauber. French sources claim the Renault seat is between Heidfeld and Sato. Toro Rosso is yet to confirm Jaime Alguersuari, meanwhile promising italian youngster Mirko Bortolotti has been dropped from the Red Bull Junior Team, so someone has added 2+2 and got 5 by claiming Bortolotti’s moving into F1. I think it’s nonsense as I see Bortolotti as even less prepared for F1 than Alguersuari seemed last year! USF1 should announce José María López soon, and brit James Rossiter has came up out of nowhere as a possibility for the other seat – which would make for a weird and likely uncompetitive pair of drivers. There’s no news for the other remaining seat at Campos, and they seem to have bigger things to worry about right now…

- …because it appears Adrian Campos is so desperate for money he is trying to sell the team, or a part of it. Shady former A1GP boss Tony Teixeira is linked to it, and the story seems to have credibility as even Autosport have reported on it. USF1 gave some good news by announcing they will test next month at Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama, after persistent rumours that the team is not for real. Then it all surfaced again yesterday with the Gazzetta de lo Sport claiming the team had asked the FIA to start the season at Barcelona, skipping the first few races. Jonathan Noble meanwhile has rubbished these claims.

- Outside of F1, there is plenty of people competing in the Dakar in South America, although there’s not much of battles for the lead there. In cars the Volkswagens have 2 hours over the rest of the pack; in trucks the 3rd placed is already 7 hours behind the russian Kamazes; and in bikes Cyril Despres also has over an hour of a lead – after some controversy with Marc Coma being penalized with 6 hours for an irregular tyre change.  The portuguese have been doing well, Carlos Sousa 7th in cars with a severely restricted Mitsubishi, and Hélder Rodrigues 4th in the bikes. Both have been running higher in earlier stages and have dropped back.

- In rallying, the season is about to start, as the IRC has their biggest event of the year in the Monte Carlo Rally. Robert Kubica and Toni Gardemeister are the latest additions to a superb lineup. I am pretty excited about the Monte, the IRC, and interested about the rivalry with the new S2000 Cup of the WRC so I might write an article about this soon. There’s also the Arctic Rally this month, and this is of interest because Kimi Raikkonen will do his debut in the Citroen C4 WRC.