Silly Season 2011 Thread

[Giblet]

I get what you mean, I just find that excuses can pile up, and Hulk just never shone like the whole of F1 thought he would. Pole Position not withstanding.

[raymondu999]

Maldonado looks like he is on a mission; you can see the fire in his eyes. I never saw that with Hulkenberg. Pastor has a whole country depending on him, while the Hulk seemed too complacent this year, as if he was the shiznit.
His temper tantrums never helped either.

Mark this post. Maldonado will do a better job than the Hulk.
Hulk is overated, not one moment last year was he spectacular bar the brasil pole.

Sorry, but Maldonado just doesn't have the talent. It took him ages to get towards the top in GP2, and he made many silly mistakes on the way. Hülkenberg on the other hand totally dominated the GP2 series in his rookie season. I've seen absolutely nothing from Pastor to justify your claim that he will do a better job thank Nico, it all sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Hulkenberg had the upper hand on Maldonado racing for the same team: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_GP2_Series_season

Eh? Am I missing something here? Hulkenberg solidly kicked Maldonado's arse. How did Maldonado have the upper hand on Hulkenberg with 36 points vs 100?

EDIT: Pardon, had me eyes crossed for a minute there

[ringo]

Hulk was supposed to be the next hamilton base on his resume; he fell short by a lot.

The Williams FW33 is not the MP4-23... and Barichello did more than 50000 laps in his carrer, in very different cars...

Hulk had 19 races to show his mettle. He had a nice talkative teammate who helped him as well. Rubens was more of an experienced father figure who could show you the ropes, than a direct competitor to Hulk.
Alonso was of no help to rookie Hamilton. Hulk probably had the best environment for a rookie driver. A nice q3 car that's not so good that he was under pressure to win races and a very experienced team, unlike HRT or Virgin.

Hulk didn't fail, in fact he did ok, but not good enough to justify pushing away the big money and marketing potential of having the only Venezuelan driver.
Hulk is just one of the german drivers, and he isn't even the top 3 of the 7.
He isn't special in Germany i would believe; too many stars.

Let the show us what he got. We need more western drivers outside of Brazil.

[raymondu999]

I think that's a valid point that ringo brings up there. If Maldonado didn't bring cash, it would be a no brainer decision to go with the hulk.

[vall]

ok. Virgin also confirms the two drivers fro 2011:

http://totalf1.com/full_story/view/3614 ... _for_2011/

[Sawtooth-spike]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88745

Pretrov confirmed

[ringo]

Ok, more than likely Sutil stays at force India.
Now there are 3 drivers vying for 1 seat

Hulk, Luizzi, Di Resta.

Di Resta is rated highly by Vettel, so that should give him an edge. I think he or Luizzi gets the seat.

I was expecting Hulk to go to HRT, but maybe his pride wont allow him.

[ESPImperium]

4 seats remaining. 1 of them will be Sutil i feel.

I can see something be struck out at Force India, where Liuzzi and Di Resta get race about for the first 6 to 8 GPs, the driver that impresses most will land the seat for the rest of the season.

Hulkenberg will probably end up with Mercedes as the Test & Reserve driver.

As for Hispania, id recon that you could be looking at Josef Kral and/or posibly Davide Valsecchi for one seat with either Christian Klien or Bruno Senna for the second seat. However Hispania need to get a chassis before getting a driver lineup confirmed.

I see more drivers settling for TD & RD roles for 2011 now as theres less than 15% of a chance of landing a drive for 2011 now.

[ringo]

formula 1 needs a b league or relegation league. Too many drivers out there man.

[ESPImperium]

formula 1 needs a b league or relegation league. Too many drivers out there man.

This brings in the promotion/relegation to GP2 into the argument again.

Promoted on Season 1, immunity that season, second season double jepordy as imunity from relegation is removed.

Would much rather see GP2 go for a 75% F1 race distance than have 2 races a weekend tho.

But thats going into diffrent realms.

[mith]

In my opinion Petrov don't deserve seat in F1. He crashed so many times, that at some point I stopped counting and I'm sure that more is to be seen He didn't impress speed-wise too. But in the end it seams his Rubles brought to the team as well as opportunities for Proton to do business in the east were the key factors.

Well, I don't care, cause this extra money means, that Kubica will have faster car next year

[Tamburello]

I think Petrov deserves another season or half. Yes his driving was mistake ridden all year but in amongst these he was involved in some of the biggest and most memorable episodes of driving of the season, e.g. the dual with Hamilton in Malaysia where a WC had to use underhand tactics to keep a rookie from overtaking him, his excellent drive in Hungary and of course the much talked about last race. He seems to have the pace but its just not on tap but there's something he can work on there.

[ESPImperium]

My opinion on Petrov is that he is a flawed rough diamond. In his GP2 days he was prone to stupid mistakes, but when there was something at stake he fought and fought to get to where he was at. I think he will do fine with another season as he now has the inside knowlege of how F1 works and the team works. If Piquet was worthy of an extra half season in 2009 from his 2008 drives id recon that Petrov is worthy of the second season.

The only critisism that the Renault engineers had of Petrov last year was his use of the english language, somthing Petrov is working hard on now as this way he can get that extra tenth or two out the car.

Im happy for Petrov to be given a second season.

[alvinkhorfire]

http://en.espnf1.com/ferrari/motorsport ... 36984.html:

Express also reports that Montezemolo recently made an offer to entice Red Bull designer Adrian Newey to Ferrari. Newey reportedly turned the offer down.

Monty does not enough faith in his 2011 Ferrari car?

[Morteza]

Newey in Ferrari? Well that's something really interesting. Newey has given championships to Williams, McLaren and a championship to Red Bull. He has turned down Ferrari offer for some reason, but if he's gonna be in Ferrari, a championship winning car is something really close to reality, isn't it?