Anthony Davidson

[advanR]

I just read what he had to say about pay drivers on f1live.com. I dont know much about him, but am starting to like him already. He says he will never pay for a drive in F1 and that both Ralph Firman and Justin Wilson are going to be blown away by their teammates. I have to agree on that one.

He also said this,

"I thought about ways of raising the cash but the best I could have done was £300,000, and that wouldn't have bought a drive in an ice-cream van."

That made me crack up.

 

[driessie]

I heard an other story about his Minardi drive a few days ago.

There was an interview with David Saelens on TV. He was Minardis reserve driver last season, so he was expected to drive the 2 GP's? "BUT, he said, a few days before the weekend, some guy shows up with a lot of cash, so I lost the chance of my life."

Saelens is one of the best Belgian drivers of the moment, but it is very hard to get sponsorship in this country these days.

 

[Wastegate]

It's getting harder and harder for drivers to get into Formula 1 these days. I can think of a few of reasons

1) There are so few F1 drives available. Just 20 cars means only 20 people in the world can drive F1 races. The current rules will only allow a maximum of 26. I would like to see us back to the days of 30ish with some not making the cut on a Saturday.

2) Driver careers go on for much longer. Nowadays it's unusual for drivers to retire for any reason than they're not wanted anymore. In years gone by lots of drivers would achieve all they wanted to and get out. Hakkinen is one of the few to have done so in recent years

3) The greatly increased safety means that fewer drivers get injured or killed. This is definitely a good thing, although it does make it harder to get to F1.

Even very talented young drivers are expected to bring budgets to F1 these days, except for the very few lucky ones.

I agree that Firman and Wilson will struggle this year. I'd back Firman as the better driver and think he will learn F1 faster than Wilson, but he's up against a stronger teammate. He's a talented driver whose ability was masked by a few years of hopeless machinery in Japan.

This year is the first I can remember which does not look to have a driver who will be competing well out of his depth, like Yoong was last year. After all the rookies have good pedigrees. Wilson was F3000 champ, Firman Nippon champ, da Matta won the Champ Car series and Pizzonia looks like a quick lad from his F3000 and especially F3 results.

 

[advanR]

was mcnish possibly a worse driver than yoong last year? he was being compared to a very good teammate, and often had a worse car. mcnish was in a much faster car. Being compared to salo didnt make him look too bad, but now comparing against renault drivers he is always a few seconds back.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I agree with Davidson's stance, but that directly results in him not having a drive this year...

I thought McNish was very good, but he just lucked out a couple of times. I don't think he would have kept his drive anyway because Toyota Japan had already decided who they wanted, and I think that McNish was very much Andersson's pick.

Firman and Wilson? I disagree with Wastegate - I think that Wilson is better than Firman, but I can't see either of them doing anything remarkable.

 

[driessie]

Originally posted by advanR
Being compared to salo didnt make him look too bad, but now comparing against renault drivers he is always a few seconds back.

I don't think you can compare testing with a GP, because you don't know what each driver is doing. On can be doing tyre tests with a lot of fuel, while another does aerodynamics tests or even qualifying practice.

It's impossible to say where a team or a driver stands before the end of the first GP and sometimes you even have to wait longer than that.

 

[Pupik]

McNish seemed to have all the bad luck last year. I got the idea from the get-go that he wouldn't last more than a year, but Toyota needed a dependable driver more than a racer in 2002. He's quite experienced, and like many other drivers, somehow never made his way to the top when he was young.

Kelvin Burt, anyone?

 

[Wastegate]

Kelvin Burt? I don't think so. He's been out of single-seaters for far too long. When did he last race one, 1995?

The shame of the Burt story is that such a talented Driver never got to F3000 let alone F1.

 

[advanR]

Originally posted by driessie
I don't think you can compare testing with a GP, because you don't know what each driver is doing. On can be doing tyre tests with a lot of fuel, while another does aerodynamics tests or even qualifying practice.

It's impossible to say where a team or a driver stands before the end of the first GP and sometimes you even have to wait longer than that.

I totally understand the unreliability of comparing times for testing. But I think you can take a little out of it. Toyota had a car last year that deserved much more than last place. Put this together with the fact I have seen his winter testing times 3 SECONDS back from alonso and trulli's times, and I think there is a pattern. Im pretty sure they were all using the R23 (R24? I forgot the 2003 contenders name). Even if mcnish was runnning last years car with a completely full tank, and they were running the new model with a dry tank, I dont think the difference would be that large. This happened for more than one test session BTW.

I dont know much about Mcnish, but have picked up the impression that he is an older guy that lacks speed. I think he deserves more chances, because his luck was really bad last year, but I dont think he deserves a race seat for 2003. His role at Renault looks good for him though, especially with their choice of testing.

Mcnish is probably a faster driver than yoong. I do however think that some of the criticism of yoong has been too harsh. There was an article on f1live.com a few months back that compared yoongs performance to the 2nd driver of minardi for the first part of the 2001 year. It brought up some good points.

I dont love this guy or anything. I just get sick of some of the **** I hear talked about him. I havent heard any here, thats good. But elsewhere. Whenever I hear some punk talk about yoong like he is garbage I ask them if they are even 50% of the driver that he is.

He was driving a horrible car last year. Often worse than Webber's. His teammate, webber, was very good. F1 is tough, I also think some of the criticism he has taken, especially from his home country, affected his performance.

 

[Wastegate]

AdvanR, my opinion of Yoong is that he was a driver just a little out of his depth. He had a pretty solid record in the lower formulas, but was thrust into F1 by GoKL before he was ready.

Yoong is a quick race driver, but that is not enough in F1, you have to be exceptional to look average against the rest there. All of the established F1 stars have had more than solid results in lower formulas.

The exceptional few can make the jump with relatively little experience, Raikkonen is one, but even he has had better results in less time in the lower classes of racing.

I think Yoong would have been better prepared for Formula 1 if he'd had a few seasons of something like F3000 or Nippon, but whether that would have developed his career or buried it is open to question.

But let's not forget that even the slowest F1 driver is still far better at what he does than nearly the rest of the planet's population could ever be. So I agree with you that ridicule is inappropriate.

 

[Pupik]

Exactly. Someone's always the tail-end Charlie in F1, and last year it was Yoong. Before that, it was Gaston Mazzacane. Riccardo Rosset and Tora Takagi in the late-90's. And so on.

If it weren't for Yoong's money last year, Webber probably wouldn't have performed as well as he had. But to Young's credit, that WRC-like performance through the last turn of the A1-Ring in 2002 was really something!