We’re back with a first look at the new cars by our in house aerodynamicist Matt and a peak behind the curtain with Pete aka @Paddockscout back on the show to give us the lowdown on the youngsters who made it in F1 this year and those looking to set the world of the junior series alight with his ’12 drivers to watch for 2012′. All this expertly and seamlesssly segwayed in between by the drunken ramblings of yours truly.

Forget the Platypus, all hail ‘The Alain’!

Listen to the podcast by clicking any of the linkies below for itunes, straight mp3 download or streaming (seriously who does that?) and make sure to check out Pete Allen’s awesome site www.paddockscout.com

Backmarkers F1 ep 8 : All hail The Alain

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Here I’d like to focus not on poor old Rubinho, Heidfeld, Liuzzi or even Sutil, but on those young guys whose F1 careers are now hanging in the balance after barely even having started. Petrov, Alguersuari, Buemi and D’Ambrosio all had more than decent seasons last year (yes, I admit even Petrov did OK) but all are stuck in the horrible limbo of third driver hell or worse after getting unceremoniously dumped by their respective teams.

With HRT finally announcing their 2nd driver with another comeback kid Narain Khartikeyan, the 2012 grid is now officially full. Some doubts still linger over Trulli’s seat at Caterham, depending on whether Petrov can scrape together enough Russian Rubles to oust the amiable Italian w(h)inemaker. As you all know I’m probably one of the most fervent Petrov bashers out there, and while I respect Trulli’s career and talent, I’d much rather see the hungry Russian take another stab at it than witness another season of over the hill Trulli moaning and getting spanked by Kovalainen.

With Caterham’s third driver role just given to Dutch GP2 graduate Guido Van Der Garde, Petrov’s chances to remain in F1 are getting quite small indeed as the cash just does not seem to be forthcoming with the start of testing just a few days away. Virgin could have been an option with the Russian links, but the timing kind of bit them in the ass as they had already signed Frenchman Pic shortly before Vitaly’s dismissal at Renault was announced. Even in the cutthroat world of F1 it would be kind of harsh to dump a kid you just signed before he even turned a wheel…

We may see some more third driver roles announced but even in that department there are not many vacancies left. Jerome D’Ambrosio has his Gravity management and decent performances last year to thank for his the reserve seat at Lotus and who knows, if the car isn’t quite up to par and Kimi gets bored of F1 again, we may just see the Belgian back behind the wheel this year. That said, when Virgin dumped him for Pic, I didn’t see much hope for him, and with this at least he’s keeping his name and face buzzing around the F1 paddock.

Sebastian Buemi is clutching at straws landing the third driver role at both Red Bull and STR, a good way to keep himself in the system but if I were Buemi, I’d forget about any long term future at Red Bull and sponge up all that top secret knowledge about Red Bull in the simulator working with the engineers, to then offer my services to another team for next year…. on condition that they only get the info after a contract has been signed of course.

Jaime Alguersuari is another young talent to find himself without a seat or even a third driver role at the moment. It was reported he turned down the HRT seat – which in most circumstances I’d say was a good move – but in Jaime’s case it looks like he’s ending up with no role in F whatsoever so he may end up regretting that decision.

Of all the recently dumped guys, Alguersuari seems to be in the most dire straits. Vague rumors of a possible Merc role have surfaced but they are already clearly grooming Di Resta for when the old Kaiser re-retires and have Sam Bird pulling a Paffet as reserve driver. I honestly don’t see any prospects for Jaime there.

Ferrari have Bianchi and Kubica lined up, Force India have stabled Bianchi for Ferrari for a while, Sauber have Perez, Kobayashi and Gutierrez, Caterham have Sims (and perhaps Petrov), Lotus has Kimi, Grosjean and D’Ambrosio, Toro Rosso just dumped him, HRT sucks ass, Virgin need pay drivers along Glock – and have Wickens and Quaife Hobbs in their stable. Finally Williams are grooming their very promising reserve driver Bottas while cashing in on the much needed money of Senna and Maldonado. The only place I’d see some simmering of hope for Jaime would be Mclaren, since their reserve line up of Turvey and Paffet isn’t very impressive, but has Jaime really proven he deserves to be in a top seat yet?

There are just not many openings for an F1 orphan who just got robbed of his parental backing. All the other families have already picked their favored son and aren’t too keen to adopt it seems. Of course, he is still very young and has 2.5 years of F1 experience under his belt, so if he manages to keep busy this year, I’m sure his name will pop up again somewhere next year, but he really desperately needs to get himself back into the picture somewhere now that Red Bull has totally cut him loose.

The 2012 season promises to have an even more fun silly season – probably already starting after the 5th GP lol – with possible openings at the four top teams: Red Bull (Webber), Mclaren (Hamilton), Ferrari (Massa), Mercedes (Schumacher). Even further down the grid nothing is really carved in stone so we could see a total earthquake in driver movement for next year.

Stay tuned to the backmarkers F1 blog and podcast for all the insane analysis on this and much more!

The FIA banned what was supposed to be the “next must have” among the teams. Lotus took the lead on development, with Ferrari and others following behind. The RRH system was designed to use brake torque to keep the nose of the car from getting cozy with the pavement under hard breaking. This would allow teams to run lower noses, leading to better aerodynamic situations all around. Unlike the F-Duct, DRS, and KERS, the system was completely mechanical. It wasn’t driver controlled, nor was it computer controlled. The design was simple enough to be pursued by all teams, but complex enough to create an exciting development race.

I think this development race is what the FIA feared. Some R&D races, like aerodynamics in general, go well and serve the interest of the FIA/FOM (i.e. close racing+ interesting battles= higher ratings and more money). Other R&D races get out of control, where one team is leaps and bounds ahead of the others (Williams and active suspension in the early 90′s, Ferrari and Schumacher in the early/mid 00′s, Red Bull and the blown floor last year). It is the latter kind of race the FIA wanted to prevent. Last year they tried to stop the blowing madness mid-season, leading to almost universal qq-ing and an eventual reversal of the policy. Now, instead of seeing how teams will adapt to changing circumstances, the governing body decided to ban the system outright.

There are two main reasons why this annoys me. First of which, how the FIA strung Lotus and other teams out. This system has been proposed, inquired upon, and otherwise debated for over a year now by many teams. What was then Renault seems to be the leader of this group, which makes sense given the teams previous endeavors with  suspension. If the FIA had come out and banned the system straight after the 2011 season, all would have been kosher, but they didn’t. It was only after one team made this part a centerpiece of their design, and other teams began to copy it, that the governing body moved to ban it. Look, I’m not a fan of the way LRGP was run, but Lotus looked to be strong this year, and after making moves to right their situation I was willing to give them a chance. Now, I worry. Despite the system’s ultimate failure, imagine if the FIA banned forward exhausts two weeks prior to testing last year. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy. For all their talk about saving money, they wait until teams have sunk millions into a new tech before pulling the plug, without even letting it race.

This leads to my second point. Formula 1 used to be the ultimate coming together of technical know-how and cutting edge engineering. No longer. Instead of developing new and exciting technology, aerodynamic concepts, or amazing new engines, teams are restricted and regulated at every turn. No longer are we treated to cars with weird nubs, widely varied designs, and sleek curves, all in the name of speed. Instead, we get boxy bodies, platypus noses, and bans on every piece of tech that comes along. Teams have to find and exploit every loophole simply to get anything done. Now some of these restrictions are safety related, and that’s fine. As much as I yearn for the 1000hp days, the V-12 days, the days when cars had so much downforce the driver was pushed to his absolute limit, I accept that those days are gone. I’ll take concessions on those if it keeps someone alive. But this RRH is not about life and death, but is another example of the FIA’s desire for total equality. Their actions to “redistribute the speed” do two things. First, it pisses off engineers who are going to make their car faster anyway, but have more red tape to jump through. Second, it pisses me off.

And remember, Hell hath no fury like an F1 blogger scorn.

So, you might understand my confusion when it was announced that Mercedes AMG Petrobabble would not run their car at test numero uno, opting to start at the second test. Full disclosure, I’ve been watching way too much Sherlock as of late, so I may be over-deducing here, but I think I may have figured out why they’re doing this.

The first hint here is Rosberg saying he’s alright with missing the first test. Initially this struck me as just a typical PR move by Mercedes. When missing something this big teams usually take one of two routes. Either they apologize profusely, or they try and suppress as quickly as possible. But in this case, you had a driver for a team trying to move up actively campaigning to miss valuable testing time. This lead me to believe Mercedes knew their car was a dud, and they were trying to save face for sponsorships sake. However, a second clue recently dropped, which isn’t directly related to Merc, but indirectly points me to a new conclusion.

I think Mercedes have developed a winning car, capable of at least besting Ferrari in the WCC, and possibly securing a WDC podium slot.

The clue is Lotus’s recent “Suspensiongate” incident, where the sudden brain train led Merc to acquire some staff from the sinking team. I’m pretty sure at least some of this staff took their knowledge of the new system with them. Now, although this system was leaked after Merc announced they were missing the first test, I think it plays to a general theme. Mercedes have some sort of unique and/or revolutionary system. It might be a realization of this whole “front wing F-Duct” we’ve been hearing about, it might be an offshoot of some psudo-mass damper concepts that have been floating around. Either way, it’s something Mercedes are very confident will improve their pace, but revolutionary enough that they want to keep the other teams in the dark as long as possible. This is even more applicable now knowing how fast other teams are copying R&D this season.

I’m going to call it that Merc have perfected this front F-Duct concept. To keep them out of testing, the part would have to be relatively simple to test and refine, otherwise you would want to test as much as possible. A wing can be fitted and tested in a wind tunnel, and the data is easy to analyze. Contrast that to a suspension system, which needs to be tested in full scale race conditions, and would demand actual testing.In fact, I’m confident that Merc won’t run this part until the third test, using the  second test only to confirm that their basic design works.

After a way too long hiatus the dynamic duo is back for some F1 madness! It tends to get kind of hard to regularly podcast when one half is stuck in the bush next to the town of middle of nowhere,Nigeria and the other half is cramming to become the next Adrian Newey, but we managed to get another one out at last and we hope it won’t dissapoint!

Join us as we drag our sorry F1 craving asses through the final month of the off season before it gets interesting again with car launches and testing.

We lament Williams’ decision before it was even announced today, Matt is surprisingly kind to Petrov, I get into a fit about the new sporting regs and Matt has several good crises, while I just try to unsee the mental image of him podcasting in his undies. Bet that picture will come and hount him when applying for head aerodynamicist at Mclaren (or HRT, he has some pretty revolutionary ideas about the sharkfin concept).

This horrifying pic of Matt in his best ‘NaughtyNewey’ pose (note the Force India mug cleverly disguised as a Mclaren) was supposed to be given as a prize in our 2011 predictions, but since you all suck at prediciting and nobody got it right – ever- I’ll throw this one in as a strange kind of thank you for your support of the blog and podcast Prize for 2012 will be me in my hottest ‘HornyHorner’ hose

check out the podcast here! dl it on itunes, rate us there, and RT, We love it when you do that, esp Matt, he likes to be passed around

I learned from the best! -Matt

dl as mp3: BackmarkersF1 podcast Ep7 2012 Silly Season

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I gave Bruno a shot. I defended him on this very show against a Belgian on full attack mode. Being of Polish decent myself, I can tell you both of our defensive tactics were remarkably underwhelming. Anyway, I did what I could to defend Bruno, saying he just needed time to blossom. Sure, LRGP were already knee deep in Boullier’s mess at that point, with a car that was making the Saubers look like Red Bulls.  Still, unless the car is a total and absolute failure (funnily, like Renault was back with Grosjean the first time round) the really talented drivers will find a way to consistently drag the car places an average driver can’t. Despite a few flashes of talent, they were not great enough nor constant enough to warrant a contract going into 2012. I like the guy, I have nothing against Bruno, and seeing SEN on a timing board again gets me all excited, but he’s not cut out for F1. At best he’s GP2 worthy.

And now we come to Williams. They’ve been caught in the same pattern we’ve seen many past teams fall into. They’re perormance starts to decline, the best drivers leave meaning the car isn’t driven to it’s potential, performance continues to decline, the team starts losing sponsorship and interest, performance still drops, senior and talented engineering staff begin leaving, performance decreases, the team takes a pay driver and retains some talent, performance still declines, mass staff exodus, performance doing down still, two pay drivers are signed to try and keep the team afloat.

Senna, at this point, is nothing more than a pay driver. Some reports claim his sponsorship package is worth $15M, substantially more than the ~$5M Barrichello has to his name. Now not all pay drivers turn out to be duds. Look at Schumacher, or as my spellcheck insists on calling him, Schumpeter. Schumpeter was hired by our favorite eccentric Irishman, and went on to become F1′s most accomplished and second best driver of all time (still keeping you on top Ayrton).

The difference is, we already know the outcome in Senna’s case. Schumy was an unknown when he was signed, and although he went on to achieve greatness, he started off an unknown quantity. We’ve already seen Senna drive. As with all drivers, I’m willing to overlook their first year simply because they are entering into a brave new world of performance. However, by their second year, no matter what technical wizardry is thrown your way, you have a handle on the basics of driving a car around corners at 5G.

Bottom line, the guy doesn’t have what it takes. By the time most you are reading this, the decision should be announced, and we’ll know the fate of a once great F1 team. If Barrichello gets the seat, we might see the team claw their way back. However, if Senna gets the seat we enter the final portions of this viscous cycle I outlined earlier in this post.

Barring the paid driver being an undiscovered driving genius, performance continues to decline. The team may frantically try switching drivers left and right, jumping from sponsorship package to sponsorship package, trying to get any source of income. Moral sinks, any decent engineering staff still attached to the team jumps ship, performance… you get the point. Next? The team ceases to be. This is the route Williams is taking right now. A once prestigious team, a championship winning team, a team who’s performance was enough to pull the late Senna from McLaren, a team that was held in the regard of McLaren and Ferrari, will vanish. They will become the team that was, joining the ranks of Stewart, Jordan, Jaguar, BAR, Toyota as teams that once built the fastest machines in the world.

This can be prevented. If Williams would get their heads our of their collective asses and hire a driver with experience, someone who regardless of their poor performance of late knows how things run, we can avoid this fate. I once thought to survive Williams would need someone like Senna to take the seat. However seeing his mediocrity play out race after race I now know signing him is a death sentence.

If Williams signs Barrichello, I might get to sit with my future children, point at the TV/Holodevice/whatever the hell we watch F1 on in the future and say “Look! There’s the Williams driving around [insert Middle Eastern Tilkedrome here].” I fear this won’t be the case, and Williams will abandon any hope for the future for the short term cash infusion, dooming them to failure. I predicted a team collapse by 2015 if they take Senna on, but after reading up on other teams, and some more thought, I was wrong.

If Williams sign Senna, they won’t make it to 2013.

Both won titles amidst allegations of some technical irregularities, Benetton for the traction control, and Renault for the mass dampers. At least Alonso did not have to barge anyone off the road to win his first title and the mass dampers were much less dodgy than the Bennetton’s fairly blatant cheating.
Both left the team after back to back world titles, and at both times the team’s performance tailed off in the following seasons. The following year both flirted with a third consecutive world title. The Ferrari’s bad reliability in the first half of the season hampered Schumi’s title charge in 96 in his first year with Ferrari, eventually finishing third in the WDC and unable to challenge the superior Williams consistently. Alonso was in with a serious shot for the title in 2007 with Mclaren but finished 3rd in the WDC as well after a tough year for driver and team.
Here is where the stories diverge a little. While Schumi stayed firmly put with the Scuderia in his quest to return the fledgling squad back to former glories, Alonso spent two years in the wilderness at his old team. Nonetheless, for both drivers their 2nd season after becoming double world champ was stained by scandals. 1997 saw Schumi lose the title to Villeneuve, which became a part of the dark side of Schumacher’s legacy  due to another one of his unsportsmanlike on-track moves in Jerez, while Alonso was in the eye of the storm in the Spygate affair already in 2007, but that was just peanuts compared to Crashgate in 2008 where Briatore ordered Nando’s teammate to crash in Singapore in order to trigger a safety car which would greatly help Nando to win the race.
In the third post-championship year, the stories are not very similar, except that both had overall quite disappointing years. Schumi had to contend with Mika Hakkinen snatching the title away from him, while Alonso was still trudging along in an uncompetitive Renault but their fourth post championship year saw the stories converge again. As Schumacher had done before him, Alonso now tied his fate to the Scuderia on a long term project to bring the team back to the top.

Again Schumacher narrowly missed out on the title against the flying Fin, while Alonso lost the title in the final race to one of the many German offspring Schumi’s F1 success had created. This all made me think that 2011 was surely going to be the year of Fernando Alonso and Ferrari, as it had been for Schumi 5 years after his second world title, but alas yet again Baby-Schumi spoiled the party for Nando.
While the timing may be a tad off, we can still consider the Vettel 2 year interlude much like Hakkinen’s back to back championships run in ’98 and ’99 which tempered Schumacher’s hopes for 2 years running. Perhaps 2012 will indeed be Nando’s time to join the elite club of triple world champions?
After all, Schumi did only win his third title aged 31, and guess which birthday Alonso will be celebrating in July next year?

Don’t worry, I haven’t lost the urge to blog or my love of F1, it’s just that we at BackmarkersF1 strive to be a bit different from your standard Formula blog. If you follow us on Twitter you may have noticed we typically tweet about a new article a couple of times and leave it. We don’t beg for retweets, we don’t endlessly throw ourselves at people, we don’t spam your timeline, and we most certainly will never do that “follow back” bullshit. We want our followers to be interested in what we have to say, intent on contributing to the discussion. We aren’t out to pad our follower count or our page hit count and other ego-centric things. We do this because we love Formula 1.

The same applies to the blog. We could copy/paste every new story that comes out, put a quick cite, then demand retweets out the bum. However, doing this would violate everything we set out to do. This is a place for analysis, deduction, and (admittedly at times biased) opinion. Unfortunately, this silly season has hit a bit of a factual speed bump. Sure, there are plenty of rumors going around as to who will go where, but nothing is definitive yet.

So until things become factual and worthy of discussion we’re stuck in this holding pattern with you. Car launches are just over two weeks away, and I promise when they happen I’ll do my aerodynamisist thing and let you know what I think of the new cars. Hold on just a bit longer!

Oh, and in case you’re not in the Youtube loop, we’ve got a few new videos up HERE!!!!!!!! ZOMG RT RT RT RT RT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While the car is obviously one major worry for the team, their driver situation is not very rosy either. Barrichello seems to have lost quite a bit of pace judging by his lackluster 2011 performance but at least remains very motivated and even desperate to retain his F1 seat. Maldonado has shown brief flashes of talent with some good quail laps and the race in Monaco, but in general was probably the most underwhelming rookie of 2011 and is really only in a race seat because of PVDSA and the reported 28 million USD they bring to the team. While there are some murmurings in Venezuela about that shady sponsorship deal, and with Chavez’s health seemingly waning Pastor may find himself out of a drive after all, at this point it seems rather unlikely.

Assuming he stays, that starts Williams off with one average driver confirmed for 2011. Now that wouldn’t be so bad if the team had a fast and experienced guy to lead the team and give Maldonado a chance to grow out of the spotlights (if he has any growth left of course, which is doubtful imo), but that is where Barrichello has let them down. Already in 2010, Williams was bullish about its 2011 contender because of the invaluable input Rubens could give with his vast experience, being involved in the car’s development from day 1. As we all know now, the car turned out to be a dog so that’s one strike against Rubens’ usefulness. Now it would be unfair to pin all the development failures on the driver, the tech team already deservedly took the main blame for that, but his experience in car development is one of the main selling points for Rubens.

However, the area where he has no excuses is the driving part, and there as well he has failed to deliver in 2011. The few Q3 appearances for Williams were all for his decidedly average teammate, and while he had the upper hand on race pace, it is inexcusable to be troubled to that degree by Pastor. Even points wise Rubens would have ended up behind Maldonado had it not been for the latter’s tangle with Hamilton in Monaco. Knowing that on merit alone he does not really deserve an F1 seat anymore, Rubens has now gone out with the begging bowl and has reportedly scraped together the not unimpressive sum of 5 million USD in personal sponsorship to bring to the team, which equals the money another prime candidate for the Williams seat brings: Adrian Sutil and his Medion backing. It is a testament to Rubens’ motivation that he didn’t feel too important to refuse to find new sponsors (ahem Hulkenberg), but it is also a bit sad that the loveable veteran had to go there. It may have paid off in the end, as Rubinho has just posted a mysterious tweet about a visit to England and that he’s now awaiting good news from Williams.

For Sutil, the Medion money has been there throughout his career, the backing always insuring him a nice seat at Force India/Spyker and over time he has racked up quite a few years of experience as well. However as reported by paddock insider Joe Saward Sutil is not exactly known for his technical abilities either, and Williams really needs a guy who can drive car development forward. Being quick will simply not be enough to drag Williams out of the swamp. Therefore I think the team really missed out when they failed to conclude negotiations with Raikkonnen who ticks all boxes: speed, skill, technical knowledge, experience and in a way even sponsorship. What the Fin lacks in personal sponsors, he has in bucket loads when it comes to attracting team sponsors: despite being off the grid for two years he is still one of the most popular drivers around with a worldwide fanbase.

Bruno Senna is another driver hovering around the Williams factory as was recently reported, and while I’m a sucker for nostalgia and do like the Brazilian he is just not what the team needs in 2012. To be that man he would have had to replicate his debut performance in Spa quali every time he stepped into that Renault car this year.

With Helmut Marko once again wielding the axe at Toro Rosso, two other hopeful have joined to look into the most coveted seat of the 2 ones that are left – seriously who’d really want to go to HRT ? Of course F1 being F1 there may still be some surprises but those are the only 2 seats officially left open now that STR and Force India have made their choices. It just comes to show how low the team has fallen. While in the past every driver would have given his left nut to drive a Williams (well I would not be surprised if Ayrton actually did offer his left nut to sir Frank in 1992 and 1993), now Williams is reduced to picking out the leftovers. Anyone who lands that F1 seat will surely be relieved, but is also a bit like the fat kid in gym class, always getting picked last because nobody really wants him on their team.

Talking of leftovers, there are still Jerome D’Ambrosio, Tonio Liuzzi, Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov floating about but I doubt these guys have what it takes to convince Williams they are what the team needs. They could also take a punt on a young driver like their very promising reserve driver Bottas. While very impressive at the Abu Dhabi young driver test and driver voted most likely to give me a crisis in the near future – of the good kind –  the step from GP3 to F1 would be huge. He would not be the first Fin to make a similar step though as Raikkonene jumped from F3 to F1, so who knows.

All things said and done it looks like Sutil is currently Williams’ best bet, but Rubinho is not ready to give up so soon.  Their biggest weakness really is that they are so tied to Maldonado’s money that they can’t really take a punt on somebody else. At least Sutil is a known quantity, and has proven in the second half of this year that he does have some serious skill. The showdown seems to be between Sutil and Barrichello, with Bruno Senna as the outsider. To be perfectly honest, reading those three names hardly strengthens my expectations for Williams do play any role of significance next season, so any Williams fans out there, I fear the new year will not be a very happy one for you, but have my best wishes anyway. I’ll be ‘celebrating ‘ Christmas at work in 30C degree temperatures, and hopefully get back to my podcasting ways soon.

So, who do you think should get the Williams drive, and who do you think will get it? – not necesarrily one and the same person

So what next for Vitaly? Back to Lada ice racing? Snow scooters? Run an illegal Vodka distillery? Become Putin’s shoe shiner? No, his best bets now seem to be with the backmarkers HRT and Virgin. Virgin, being renamed Marussia makes some sense with whole the Russian thing, but then again the team have already confirmed both Charles Pic and Timo Glock. With the inexperienced Pic unlikely to be dumped a month after getting signed, it seems Glock’s seat may be a bit under pressure but  it would be foolish to dump Glock who’s done incredibly well in a dog of a car these past two seasons.

Unless Glock lands a drive somewhere higher up the grid – and the only place that’s still all open seems to be Williams which isn’t very far up the grid sadly enough- I do not see Petrov getting a ride for Marussia this year.  With De La Rosa signed HRT will be looking for a paying 2^nd driver, and Petrov might just perfectly fit the bill there.

Don’t forget, the Russian lived in Valencia for years– the teams’ new home base – until Renault forced him to move to the UK this year and his money combined with 2 years of F1 experience should be quite attractive to the team, much better than some other untalented pay driver with no experience coming in. For Petrov it would be a great move to keep his career alive in anticipation of a possible move to Marussia in 2013. Therefore, perhaps seemingly illogically, the chances are higher for the Russian to end up a the Spanish team rather than at Marussia this year.

While Grosjean’s chances seemed relatively slim, with Boullier appearing to be under fire within the team, and faced against the might of Senna’s Brazilian and Vitaly’s Russian connections, the Swiss/Frenchman found some major backing with oil giant Total announcing they extended their contract with the team for one year  the same day Grosjean was presented to the press. This is of course a boost to Boullier as well, seeing he landed ‘his’ driver the second seat. Now what would make me even happier is if he manages to land D’Ambrosio at least a reserve driver seat with Lotus, seeing he is still in his management stable and that the Belgian deserves another crack at F1.

Grosjean is of course more Swiss than French being born, raised, and still living in Switzerland  but that’s a whole other matter. If we are brutally honest, we should be happy the most deserving guy got the seat in the end. Grosjean is this year’s very dominant GP2 champ and he was quite impressive in his 2 FP1 outings in the final races. Vitaly and Senna are little more than just another pay driver sadly enough, as we always talk about sponsor money when mentioning them, never just about their talent.