Marussia drops Glock

Marussia confirmed on Monday, that they have dropped German Timo Glock form the driver line-up for this season´s championship..

The team, narrowly missing out on 10th place in the constructors championship last year, hired Max Chilton to face alongside Glock this season, but a recent German report strongly indicated that a split between the two parties were imminent. The team also said that the decision was mutual with Glock accepting his fate and that they had been looking for a driver with a stronger financial package.

Team boss John Booth:

“Timo has made a very significant contribution to our team over the past three seasons, helping us to develop our package to the point where, for a large proportion of the 2012 season, we were holding 10th place in the constructors’ championship.

“Timo is a fantastic driver and he has been a very popular member of the team. Our team was founded on the principle of benefiting from proven experience whilst also providing opportunities for young emerging talent to progress to the pinnacle of motorsport. Thus far, this philosophy has also been reflected in our commercial model. The ongoing challenges facing the industry mean that we have had to take steps to secure our long-term future.

“Tough economic conditions prevail and the commercial landscape is difficult for everyone, Formula One teams included. We would like to thank Timo for working with us to reach this decision, especially as he had a valid contract, and also for the contribution he has made to our team. We wish him all the best for his future and I would like to congratulate the next team acquiring the services of such a competitive, professional and experienced racer.

“We will provide an update regarding the completion of our driver line-up in due course.”

Vitaly Petrov has been rumoured to be offered the vacant seat at Marussia. He is backed by some serious Russian rubles, and the Russian GP is inaugurated next year.

Petrov or Kobayashi?

There are several new drivers on the 2013 grid and that of course means that there are some other drivers who now doesn´t have a seat anymore.

One is Kamui Kobayashi, the former Sauber driver. The Swiss based team have said their goodbyes to both Sergio Perez and Kamui kobayashi and employed the services of Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Gutierrez, the latter promoted from his role as test and reserve driver.

There are not many race seats left on the grid and HRT is no longer an option, as the hapless team folded shortly after the 2012 season finished. No buyer has shown interest in the scraps and that also means two seats less to fill.

Caterham is taking an awful long time to announce their driver line up. Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov are no longer part of the team, instead Charles Pic signed a multi-year deal with the team, but his team mate is yet to be announced. Petrov would be a good choice, but despite reports from germany that the management behind Petrov had secured new large sponsors, Petrov´s manager Oksana kosachenko is no longer that optimistic about a race seat for 2013.

“So far, we haven’t managed to find new sponsors,” said Kosachenko.

“At the moment there are a lot of unanswered questions. There are too many nuances that need to be sorted out. We’re at the waiting stage, which is linked to the team’s restructuring. We completely depend on them and can’t speed anything up.”

And Kamui Kobayashi is also a driver with no seat, despite having secured in the area of £6m, raised by sponsors and fans. Such is the support behind Japan´s most succesful F1 driver in history, but perhaps he has a future at Caterham?

Everything is speculations at this moment, but time is running out. The first pre-season test is on February 5 at Jerez, and it would suit the teams with vacant seats to finalize their driver line-ups and start getting to work. Kobayashi is perhaps not the obvious choice for Caterham, but I personally think that he could be the driver who can move the team forward, not Petrov.

 

Petrov stirring Massa´s pot

Vitaly Petrov has joined the increasingly growing choir of people who thinks they know more about the Felipe Massa situation.

The Caterham driver, who formerly raced for Renault say he thinks it is very likely that Ferrari will not hold on to Felipe Massa to finish the season. Massa has been heavily under fire for his performance, in the previous two seasons he has racked up 262 points against team mate Fernando Alonso´s 509 points, or just under half the points tally from Alonso, and the media has written the eulogy for his career.

And though Petrov believes that Massa will be fired before the season ends, it won´t happen soon, as several media outlets have stated, says Petrov.

“I don’t think they’ll fire Massa just now. At least not until August,” says Petrov.

“I wouldn’t say that Ferrari are criticising him that strongly,” he said. “They’re not saying he has one more chance or anything like that.”

Spanish Grand Prix preview – Caterham

Looking at the performance of the Caterham team from the first four races, the team has taken a small step backwards and are still chasing their first points. According to team principal Tony Fernandes, the results are looking ‘encouraging’ but admits that there is still a lot of work to be done.

“We head back to Europe after what has been an encouraging first four races for the team,” said Fernandes. “We may not have quite bridged the gap to the midfield pack yet, but we are clearly much closer than we were this time last year, particularly on race day when we have seen clear evidence of the progress we have made.

“Having been with us for four races now, I am very pleased with the job Vitaly has been doing for the team. He is obviously a fighter and he is pushing his team mate well, especially on Sundays, and that is good for the whole team. I think Heikki is due a run of better luck in the races as he has been pushing extremely hard in qualifying, particularly to get himself into Q2 in Bahrain, but he has not had the same luck when the lights go out on race day. Hopefully that will change in Barcelona and we will be able to see both cars fighting to the chequered flag on Sunday.”

Heikki Kovalainen:

“Barcelona’s a good circuit where the main challenge is to nail everything absolutely perfectly. If you make a half a tenth of a mistake it can cost you a grid position and it’s a race weekend where you have to focus on the details to give yourself the best chance of success. It’s a track with a lot of high-speed corners, some where you have to be really on it to save time, and you have to be pretty committed going into the braking zone in T1 as that’s where there is an overtaking chance. For the fans it’s often a pretty quiet race because it’s a tough circuit to overtake on, but that makes qualifying even more crucial and means you have to get the plan on Saturday absolutely right.”

Last year Vitaly Petrov placed his Renault in 6th place for the race, in which he ended just outside the points in 11th. And this year, it will be harder to get into the points, he admits.

“After a good test in Mugello we are all looking forward to getting back to racing in Spain. Barcelona is a track I know well and one I like racing on. I was on the podium there in GP2 in 2009 and while I know that’s out of reach for us at the moment, we will all be focusing on continuing to take the fight to the cars ahead and repeating the sort of performances we’ve put in so far this season, particularly on Sundays.”

 

Breaking News! Petrov replaces Trulli

In a shock announcement, the Caterham team have kicked Jarno Trulli in favour of Russian ex-Renault driver Vitaly Petrov.

Petrov visited the team’s base on Friday for a seat fitting, as he will take part in the second pre-season test, starting this coming Tuesday in Barcelona.

Team principal Tony Fernandes said:

“We are all delighted to welcome Vitaly into our team and are very excited about the role he will play in helping us take the next steps forward in 2012 and for many years to come. When we first met it was immediately clear that Vitaly understands and shares our vision for how we want our team to grow. As the first Russian to race in F1 he carries the hopes of a huge nation with ease and his talents, experience with one of our current competitors and insights on and off track will play a huge role in our development as we fight to join the established teams ahead.”

Petrov signs as Pirelli tester

Vitaly Petrov has not managed to land himself a seat in any of the 12 F1 teams, but has apparently signed as official tyre tester for Pirelli. At least that´s what several sites are reporting on Wednesday.

Vitaly Petrov will be Pirelli´s test driver for 2012, his manager Oksana Kosachenko said in a statement Wednesday. Petrov lost his seat when Lotus decided to bring back Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean as their drivers for 2012. The Russian made a couple of comments towards the end of the 2011 season, which didn´t help him stay, to say the least. If these comments has anything to do with him losing the seat, we don´t know.

According to Paul Hembrey, Pirelli´s direcor of motorsport, the rumours of Petrov signing with Pirelli, are not true. “Just to clarify Vitaly is here as a guest, we do not have a test car never mind talking test drivers. So no truth in rumours.”

Right now Pirelli is using an old Toyota chassis, which is out of date, and so the tyre manufacturer is looking for a new car. Only problem is, that the teams are not happy of one chassic being used over another, thus giving one team a helping hand.

Petrov is still free to go racing if a contract emerges. There are still rumours circulating, that Jarno Trulli might be replaced over at Lotus.

Kosachenko has managed to stir up some confusion, if nothing else, in first reacting to the rumours about a test role at Pirelli for Petrov, and then soon after dismiss the previous comments. Perhaps Petrov should shop for another agent….

 

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.

Grosjean came with the right sponsors

The sponsor package that came with Romain Grosjean was the strongest factor ahead of anything else, when Lotus were deciding which driver to partner Kimi Raikkonen for the 2012 campaign.

Lotus has had a tumultuous fall, after narrowly securing fifth in the constructors championship, the team were hoping that they could have their star driver Robert kubica back after his injuries in February. Then things started to go wrong. The management of Kubica said one thing, the doctors said another and Lotus said they didn´t know what to think. Then Petrov talked about the difficult season and slammed the performance of the car and lack of development, but soon team principal Eric Boullier said that they all had a nice little talk and everyone then thought Petrov was safe.

However, Petrov is out, completely, from Lotus and will have a tough time finding a seat,unless of course Vijay Mallya snatches him up for one of the seats still available at Force India. But the decision to sign Grosjean, is all about the best sponsors, says Jean Alesi.

Speaking as an ambassador for the team, Alesi admits that the fact Grosjean came with Total, the French oil company, was the deciding factor. His sponsorship package was simply better than Petrov´s.

“Grosjean is a beginner and he’s had a chance a few years ago, but France needs a French driver and I know he will have the support of Total, so why not?” French-Sicilian Alesi said.

Alesi praises Bruno Senna for his contributions to the team, saying that with the equipment provided, the Brazilian did very well. There are still rumours that Senna will be retained by Lotus a s test driver, but the official announcement is yet to come.

“For Bruno, what he did this year was great, especially as he started in the middle of the season. He had to jump in the car straight away and he has been quick. The performance of the car was sometimes good, sometimes not, but he managed to do his job in the best way. So it’s a shame – but Total did push very much for a French driver and they pay more…”

France has no proper representatives in F1 any longer, and with a major oil company as backer, and the proposed reinstatement of a French GP alternating with the Belgian GP at Spa-Franchorchamps, the future for French drivers, and a French GP, looks at least a little brighter.