Alguersuari return in 2013

Jaime Alguersuari is adamant that he will be driving a Formula One car in 2013.

The Spaniard was dropped by the Toro Rosso team after the 2011 season, and had to sit out this year´s championship. He was then picked up by the BBC Radio commentary team and also got the Pirelli testing job, where he is driving the 2010 Renault.

“No one can imagine my enthusiasm in this very moment.  I’m just counting down the minutes to be behind the wheel of the most sophisticated machinery of the world. I could never imagine that I was going to miss so much the taste of Formula One.”

“Alongside this role I will keep my post with BBC Radio. I am really grateful to them for giving me the opportunity of joining such a professional team.

“I’m a happy man,” said Alguersuari on May 6.

Now he might be an even happier man, because a rumour is circulating in the media, that he is first in line for a possible vacant seat at Force India for 2013. Jaime has prevously stated that he will be in the 2013 championship. The rumour is well-known to Alguersuari,who even commented it in his column for El Deportivo.

“I have said that I will be in the world championship in 2013, but I did not say where and I will not tell you now. As of June, all sorts of rumours start going around in formula one, but they are just that – rumours.”

If Alguersuari is going to Force India,he could be filling Paul di Resta´s seat. The Scot has had a good debut year in 2011 and it is believed that Mercedes could be looking at a replacement for Schumacher.

 

POLL: Who should replace Massa at Ferrari

If we consider that Ferrari are considering to replace Felipe Massa, after the Italian press made minced meat of the Brazilian driver Wednesday, for his performance in the opening race in Australia, then who would you most like to see him replaced by?

Alguersuari staying in F1

When Jaime alguersuari was axed by Toro Rosso, along with team mate Sebastien Buemi, at the end of last year, Buemi took the reserve role at Red Bull and a appearance at this years 24 hour Le Mans. But Alguersuari believes that Le Mans is a ticket out of F1.

It did came as a shock to most people, including of course the two drivers, who had been told that they were doing a good job. But as Toro Rosso is a rookie team, in the sense that rookies are driving for the team to establish if they are fit for the mother team Red Bull, there was no other option. Now Jaime Alguersuari is staying in contact with F1 by being BBC´s co-commentator for the 2012 season. But Le Mans is not an option.

“No, that’s avoiding F1,” he told the BBC. “I am working for the radio and I will do some go-kart races to help with my physical training.

“Racing elsewhere is just starting another career. It’s doing something that’s not F1.In F1 you never say never. Anything can happen,” said the Spaniard.

“I respect the situation that they don’t want my work anymore, but what they’ve said is absolutely not acceptable,” Alguersuari said.

“They said we are good drivers, but we are not winners. It doesn’t make sense if you give me a car that is not capable to be in the top ten.”

 

 

HRT looking for young driver

The HRT team has ruled out Kaime Alguersuari as a potential candidate for the second seat next to Pedro de la Rosa, but are keen to get a “young driver with a lot of potential.”

Alguersuari seemed to be the logical choice for the Spanish outfit, after he lost his job at Toro Rosso, as did his team mate Sebastien Buemi. But the team, who recently signed veteran Pedro de la Rosa, says that Alguersuari would not be a good fit for the team.

HRT has been very interested in making their team as Spanish as possible, so the decision not to employ Jaime Alguersuari, who has completed 46 races for Toro Rosso and had two and a half seasons under his belt, is peculiar. According to technical director Jacky Eeckelaert, neither Alguersuari or Dani Clos are in the running.

“I don’t think it’s in the interests of the team to have a second Spanish driver,” Eeckelaert said. “The same goes for the drivers approaching retirement.”

A rather strange comment, given the fact that they hired de la Rosa who is 40 and though his career is much longer than Alguersuari´s, only has 86 races to his name, with a total of 35 points. Alguersuari 31 points. Add to the mix that the team is relocating to Spain and the new chassis is build in-house, and you have a recipe for a slow start. So, nothing new then…?

“We hope to continue our battle at the back of the pack with Virgin (Marussia),” Eeckelaert said. “It is difficult to aim higher. The Dallara chassis we used in our first two seasons was clearly not good enough. So in our German workshop we have built our own HRT to be powered by the Cosworth V8. We started fresh in September, later than the others, and so we cannot have fantasies.

“The new owners decided to move the team with the result that 90 per cent of the staff in Germany will not follow us. This is unfortunate because even if the car did not work, the team was beginning to work well together. Now it’s as though we are beginning again with a new team.”

There could be more to the decision about their drivers than what meets the eye. The likely scenario is that they simply could not find a Spanish driver with a big enough wallet. Alguersuari´s backers could have advised him not to sign as HRT is a worse deal than Toro Rosso. It is believed that Jerome d’Ambrosio, Vitaly Petrov and Bruno Senna are all on the shortlist.

Toro Rosso explains double exit

Following the announcement that both Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastién Buemi are dropped from the  team´s 20102 line-up, team principal Franz Tost explains the decision.

Australia’s Daniel Ricciardo and France’s Jean-Eric Vergne will form the driver line-up at Toro Rosso, and both have been involved with Red Bull for several years. Both are the respective British Formula 3 Champions of 2009 and 2010, and as Autosport informs, “runners-up in the two latest World Series by Renault seasons”. While Ricciardo was placed at HRT by Red Bull, in order to get some experience, Vergne will make his debut next year.

“Our driver line-up had been under discussion for a long time, as it is obviously a vital component of the team’s performance,” explains Team Principal Franz Tost.

Buemi enjoyed three fuls seasons at Toro Rosso, Alguersuari two and a half, but the formation of the team itself, has mainly been to groom future Red Bull drivers. And that philosophy remains, says Tost.

“Sébastien has been with us for three seasons and Jaime for two and a half. Both of them worked hard for the team, doing their very best and achieving some good results. However, Scuderia Toro Rosso’s ethos has always been that of the ‘rookie training school’ and, with over two seasons under your belt, you are no longer a rookie.

“In an ideal world, drivers would move from Scuderia Toro Rosso to Red Bull Racing, but there are no vacancies with our sister team right now. It might be seen as a harsh decision, but Formula 1 is a tough environment and Toro Rosso has always been very clear about the principles behind its driver choice.”

Breaking News: New drivers at Toro Rosso

In a shock announcement Tuesday, The Italian team Toro Rosso announced that both their driver, Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastién Buemi, are axed in favour of two new drivers.

The announcement comes just a few days after several media reports speculated, that Alguersuari and Buemi, finishing this season in 14th and 15th respectively, would be presented with a contract extension to keep them on board for 2012. But both drivers have been axed and two new rookie´s will graze the grid next year.

Daniel Ricciardo will be promoted from his seat at HRT to Torro Rosso, and Jean-Eric Vergne is the second new man at the team. Both are deeply involved in the Red Bull Junior Driver programme and the decision has been taken in conjunction with Red Bull.

“Over the past year both Daniel and Jean-Eric have proved their worth and I expect them to make a significant contribution to the team’s performance next year,” said Franz Tost. “Daniel has the benefit of having actually raced in Grands Prix for much of this year, while Jean-Eric proved he could adapt quickly to the demands of driving a Formula 1 car. As they have both worked with the team and its engineers very recently, this should allow us to get up to speed right from the start of winter testing in a couple of months time.”

Ricciardo was said to be the best bet for at leat one of the seats at Toro Rosso, the entire idea of having him race for HRT this season, was to see if he had what it took. He was later rumoured with a seat at Caterham, but this turned out not to be.

“This is a really big deal for me and something I have wanted ever since I was driving for Toro Rosso on Friday mornings at the races in the first part of last season,” Ricciardo said. “To be honest, I am still jumping up and down with excitement at the news. Joining Scuderia Toro Rosso was always my real goal.”

Vergne (21) has already worked with Scuderia Toro Rosso, most recently, driving in Free Practice 1 at three of the last four Grands Prix of the 2011 season.

“I definitely feel ready to make the move, even if I know there is a big difference between testing and actually racing,” he said.

Ricciardo replaces Trulli?

Daniel Ricciardo will not get the promotion he was hoping for this christmas, a seat with Toro Rosso for 2012. But the young Australian, who got his debut at this years British Grand Prix at Silverstone might be the one topush Jarno Trulli out of the Caterham team.

The 2009 British F3 champion was placed in HRT by Red Bull, to get some mileage under his belt and some proper racing experience. That occured at the height of speculation, that Toro Rosso were debating wether to keep their drivers, Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi, or to get rid of at least one of them. The idea was, seemingly, to have Ricciardo taking over a seat at Toro Rosso for 2012 and for 2013 step it up further, to become Sebastien Vettel´s team mate at Red Bull. But a third option has now appeared.

By all accounts, the rumours that either one of the Toro Rosso drivers or both of them would leave, have nothing on them, or at least that team principal Franz Tost has decided to give the boys another go. Either way, Ricciardo believes both Alguersuari and Buemi will race at Toro Rosso in 2012.

“At the moment it seems like Toro Rosso are going to stay with who they’ve got,” Ricciardo said. “It wasn’t put down 100 per cent, but it was the wording I was making out.”

The good news for Ricciardo is, that his contract with Red Bull has been extended another year and that he is now in the running to be Heikki Kovalainen´s team mate at Caterham next year, meaning Jarno Trulli will certainly face a tough time finding a race seat soon.

“There’s a good chance if I’m on the grid next year it’s going to be with another non-Red Bull outfit,” he admitted, “but I guess the good news is I’m still contracted by Red Bull.

“They’ve agreed to continue with me.”

Speaking of his chances at Caterham, alongside Kovalainen, Ricciardo says:

“I would like to say there’s a chance, but at least for me that’s probably all it is for now, just a chance. It would be a step up from this year, so it’s not really a bad thing. I doubt they’ll still be able to fight for points next year. They’ll still be towards the further end, but I think they’re progressing well.

“If Kovalainen was to be my teammate, it’s someone very good to measure up to. He’s won a grand prix before and he’s smashed Trulli this year,” he added.

India – A review

The first ever Indian Grand Prix took place on Sunday, a year after the much-talked about Commonwealth Games, where the organisers ran into negative media attention due to slow preparation work, as well as concerns over security and hygiene. But the fears were baseless. Though the winner was Sebastian Vettel, again, the circuit layout was exciting, the race was entertaining and it proved to be a massive success, for teams, drivers and spectators.

So, you would expect me to be in a good mood, perhaps. You might even think that because of this extraordinary event actually did succeed, I would be poised to be all hallelujah about the whole thing. Well, you´re not entirely wrong. I am still rather impressed with the circuit, for reasons I will let you know.

There are two long straights, on at the start/finish-line and one behind the pit-area. The long back-straight seems perfect for some high speed overtakings and it looked, on paper, easy to overtake the car in front if only the DRS was used. Yes and no. There were some good overtakings on that straight, but not as many as I had expected. The ones that counted happened at the turn, either right before the straight or coming out of it. And that was a positive surprise,really. Because instead of ‘just’ being right behind the other car within one second, and then whizz past him using DRS, it actually proved not to be that easy. Instead there were some nice overtaking manoeuvres on other parts of the circuits, one in particular I will talk about in a minute.

But though the event was a success, it still stands deep in controversy. A stupid tax that appeared out of nowhere, forced the teams to pay as much as $10 million in order to enter the country, this was then dropped, but the issue is not resolved just yet. There was the issue surronding the 300 farmers, who were unhappy with the way the government had taken their land, without compensation in some cases, to build the circuit. Power black-outs, Delhi-bellies, a possible terrorist attack and of course, the ever constant poverty that were right outside the gates.

Back to business. Let´s look at what matters for now, here´s the HOT/NOT-list.

HOT:

Jenson Button. The McLaren driver took his fourth 2nd place of the season and paired with his results all season, is the best bet for a championship runner-up. On Sunday the usual smooth driver that he is, was replaced by something a little more growling, a little more aggressive than I´ve seen in some time. It was very enjoyable to watch Button fight for second, staying within a decent distance of race winner Sebastian Vettel.

Michael Schumacher. The German ace was finally in a position to fight back, just a shame it took all year to get there. The Mercedes is still not where he wants it to be, after having suffered vibration from the rear tyres during training and qualifying, it was doubtful if he could challenge for some serious points. But I have to hand it to the 42 year-old, it was a very good and strong race from him.

Jaime Alguersuari. Sure, why not, right? The Spaniard have had an ok season, not the best start to 2011 as he could have hoped for, with six races and zero points. But then the mindset of Alguersuari started to change into a focused and goal-oriented entity, and the car began to perform a lot better as well. His 8th place moves Toro Rosso into the same points tally as Sauber and they are only ten points away from Force India in sixth place. Well done.

NOT:

Felipe Massa. You kinda knew I was going to go with Massa for the top spot, right? I am not even going to start debating, if you have a different opinion, share it, it´s fine, but I am done when it comes to Massa. He is a second slower than Alonso in the same car, and unlike Webber, who is about half a second slower than Seb, Massa doesn´t fight for it. We all know what happened during the race, so suck it up, Felipe!

As you can see, there is just one NOT today, because this one is so huge, it´s such a big NOT, that it deserves to stand alone.