It was confirmed earlier today that reigning German touring car champion Paul Di Resta will partner Adrian Sutil at the Vijay Mallya owned outfit, with Williams outcast Nico Hulkenberg signing up as third driver. Di Resta piloted theVJM-03 in 2010 on 8 occasions in Friday’s first free practice session and more often than not showed impressive speed in comparison to his teammates; whether his pace was fuel related is unknown but the fact he’s got a 2011 race drive with the team would indicate not.
What baffles me about the signing however is why teams such as Williams, Virgin, Sauber, Hispania (most likely) and now Force India are taking the risk to sign rookie drivers in this day and age of no in season testing. We saw in 2010 how long it took Hulkenberg and Petrov to get up to speed in relation to their teammates, having finished first and second respectively in the 2009 GP2 season; and we saw in 2009 the struggles Alguersuari and Grosjean went through after jumping in a car mid season for the first time. Yet 2011 see’s almost half the teams again taking the risk with a rookie driver. Why?
When Nick Heidfeld, a formula one veteran of over 170 grands prix jumped into the Sauber C29 last year having had no experience whatsoever on the new spec Bridgestone rubber or indeed with the 2010 cars, he went onto to score points in 2 of his 5 races. Christian Klien jumped into the second Hispania seat in Singapore, Brazil and Abu Dhabi and despite some bad luck in the races, comfortably outpaced Bruno Senna in almost all of the other sessions. Goes to show what a little bit of experience does…
This is why it blows me away that Nico Hulkenberg is left without a race drive in 2011. He has served his F1 apprenticeship and even took his first pole position in some of the trickiest conditions to drive in, yet he’s resigned to a third driver role for the 2011 season. Ridiculous! Drivers just aren’t being given enough time to develop and the team’s need to understand that it takes time, with the current testing restrictions, to get onto the pace of the more experienced drivers. Hulkenberg matched and bettered Barrichello on many occasions in the second half of the season and was developing very quickly into a star of the future. He had won championships in Formula BMW, Formula 3, A1GP and GP2 and an F1 championship wasn’t too far out of reach. Yet as seems to be the trend in F1, good drivers are being shafted for ‘the next big thing’ before they get a chance to show what they’re truly made of.
Take for example Pastor Maldonado, 2010 GP2 champion; what’s different between he and Hulkenberg? 1 year of F1 experience that’s what! Maldonado won the GP2 championship in his 4th attempt whereas Hulkenberg won in his first off the back of F3 Euroseries success the year before. CEO of Williams Adam Parr said he was ‘repulsed’ by comments by the media saying that he was a pay driver; saying it was purely for his talent that he was signed. Rubbish…
Wasn’t it convenient that within a few weeks of his signing, the team lands a big sponsorship deal with a big Venezuelan oil company? While the money doesn’t come from Pastor’s hip pocket, it’s quite clear Williams knew money from ‘somewhere’ would come if they signed him up alongside his fellow South American. And they say they’re not in need of money… If they weren’t, they would have kept Hulkenberg; full stop.
Now what about Force India? Di Resta has enjoyed a close relationship with Mercedes Benz dating back to 2005 when he competed in Formula 3 and with the Indian outfit running Mercedes engines, I have no doubt that pressure came from Germany to put him in the second seat. Otherwise surely they’d want to snap up Hulkenberg who had been floating around for months…
It is sad that so much talent; Heidfeld, Hulkenberg, Bourdais and Pantano; just to name a few, are being left to languish on the sidelines because of the ridiculous politics associated with F1. Just imagine if all these drivers were Russian, would they be in F1 then? Probably… F1 should be about having the best drivers in the best cars, not the ones with the most money or those who just happen to have met the right people.
Like I said before, with the current testing restrictions, teams need to give drivers more than just 1 season to show what they’re made of. It makes me sad that so much talent or the prospect of so many awesome world championship battles are being thrown away for a few extra dollars. When will it change…
