Toro Rosso have officially confirmed that Sebastien Bourdais is leaving the team after disappointing performances during the first half of this season. The Frenchman was in his second year of F1 with Toro Rosso but struggled to match the pace of teammate Buemi.
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And back on topic...Goodbuy Seb B. Although I think Todt's son will get him another drive with the newer teams.
He really needs to change his attitude though and stay positive.
Au Revoir Seb it was nice having you but things have to come to an end sometime last year first race showed real promise when he ran as high as 5th i think in Melbourne but his engine blew i expected greater things from that race on but it never seemed to add up. You may argue he wasn't adapted fully to F1 cars but great drivers adapt quickly to their machinery don't they? And his attitude wasn't positive enough in my opinion to bring him major success hopefully his replacement will do well seeing as STR are getting that second a lap update whether it's Alguesari or whoever i just want them to do something that takes my mind off of the frustration Bourdais caused me.
Seems like there were a lot of similarities between Scott Speed and Bordais at STR. Both were given almost no pre-season testing; operated under the threat of being fired almost their entire 2nd season; got fired after the German GP; STR got major upgrades after German GP allowing the new drivers to post much better results than were possible in the cars Speed/Bordais were provided.
We'll have to wait & see about that last part - if the STR upgrades result in a superior performance by Bordais' replacement.
One big difference between Speed & Bordais was their performance vs their teammates. Speed deserved to keep his ride more than Bordais.
It just shows how weak a split series like the Champ Car series was. If a four times champ cannot hack it in F1 the quality of the split series in the US must have been subterranian.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
Dont jump to conclusions, CART had some great drivers in it, and champ car although not nearly as good was still pretty strong. Bourdais could maybe excel with another team. NASCAR could say the same of F1 seeing how Montoya, JV and Speed have struggled over there.
NASCAR and F1 are entirely different type of races. Champ Car and F1 were at least both single seater open wheel road courses. You would expect to be much much more similarities. So Bourdais performance was a big dissapointment to me.
Formula One's fundamental ethos is about success coming to those with the most ingenious engineering and best ..............................organization, not to those with the biggest budget. (Dave Richards)
"It could be done manually. It would take quite a while, but it could be done. There is however a much more efficient and accurate way of getting the data. Men with lasers." Wing Commander Andy Green
I really like Bourdais, from watching him handle Paul Tracy so easily in CART.
Tracy was known to be an extremely big talent in the lower series on his way to CART, and was the guy to beat for a while. Seb B. made him look bad, and made him angry on more then one occasion. he was very confident yet, but F1 not looking at him for so long didn't help, and made him question himself I think.
Seabass is a lot like me, if everything is going well, that acts as fuel to do even better, but if not, he can be easily effected.
The junior drivers in the series, like Vettel an Buemi, don't have to look like seasoned experts in their rookie year, and were able to take more risks, as nobody faults a rookie for going off sometimes in the first year, but Seb B was pressured from above to perform like a rookie with nothing to lose, but also expected to use his experience to bring the car home.
The "TSN turning point" in his career, I think , was when he was left on the starting line of Monza last year, while his teammate collected his first win.
Everyone forgets that in that race, if his car didn't fail him, he would have likely got a podium for STR right behind Vettel, or, as he got a faster race lap then Vettel, and is a racer with lots of dicing it up experience, _could_ have hung on for a win.
If he had some time to test, and wasn't under a thumb constantly, he may have done better. STR seems only interested in finding fast rookies, and not using the experience of older drivers to the best effect.
Bourdais has no reason to be down, he can be a jack of all trades like JV is turning out to be, running in LeMans and whatever other series he feels like.
His F1 career might not be done yet as well.
Before I do anything I ask myself “Would an idiot do that?” And if the answer is yes, I do not do that thing. - Dwight Schrute
ISLAMATRON wrote:Bourdais had better equipment than Tracy when in CART... and Seabass still always had to hit PT from behind to take the win.
PT is the man!
+1
axle wrote:
ISLAMATRON wrote:Prost was very correct when he said that Bordais attitude was way too negative to be successful.
+1
+2
Now he is getting his lawyers to look if his contract was breached. This guy needs to stop whining! He got his butt kicked, end of story, getting the boot from STR was overdue!
Even with the update package on the car, the best the STR car could do is P 9. Still no points, get him out and let a youn driver prove what he's got, (just like Vettel did last season)
I've not seen much of what kind of driving style was Bourdais'. Did he have a smooth style or an aggresive one? I think that both Vettel and Buemi were aggressive. And perhaps that's the way the STR '08 & '09 liked to be treated?
A good example of how a smoother style requires the right car is the '09 Braun. Obviously a car taylored for Button's style. (read: not made for Rubens)
I think that STR will be wise to find a veteran driver for 2010. And preferably someone who can contribute with car development of course.
I think this is one difference between East and West. F1 needs drivers who can contribute to car development, not just setups.
Edit: forgot to mention that I was rooting for Bourdais too. I would've at least liked to have seen him duking it out with his team mates. Then at least STR could've used Bourdais as a motivator for Red Bull's young driver program.
Back in his Champcar days, Bourdais was the always the first one to whine if he felt he was impeded, touched, or in a few cases with PT, shown the chrome horn with force. He always came off like he was entitled to something more than his competitors. In Mexico City when he bashed wheels with Justin Wilson for the pass on the last lap (using the theory that 8 wheels turn better than 4), he was the first to call it 'hard fair racing'. Justin having been demoted to 2nd in his interview really looked like he wanted to say something about that, but being the gentleman that he is, chose to take what happened to him with honour and like a man. Justin was also racing that day with a broken wrist, and was doing an superb job. There was just no way he was going to hold onto the wheel though if he got tagged.
My feeling is that part of his success in Champcar has to go to his engineer Craig Hampson, and to Newman-Haas for throwing cubic dollars at equipment. He seemed like he was the first one to understand that F1 fuel strategies could be applied to Champcar. Champcars usually all started a race on full tanks. Anybody who could eek out an extra laps worth of running from a tank really had an advantage. Bourdais was very good at putting in a flier of a lap when needed. Really good at qualifying. He was also pretty good at making his car pretty wide when needed, even with Champcars rules that allowed no blocking at all.
Anyway, he was still a whiner. He made PT mad, but PT made him cry.
