Their qualifying record would suggest Ricciardo's the quicker of two, and that's the most important factor. Neither of them are crash prone. I don't know where Ricciardo's losing his advantage in races, but racecraft is something that will improve with experience, raw speed is more to do with natural talent and isn't something that's likely to come with age for Vergne. Ricciardo has more potential.
STR are in that area of the grid where just being in the top 10 can actually be a disadvantage. If Ricciardo qualified 11th then his race craft would be seen
The thing is that Vergne coming good in the races would probably happen less if he got stuck in the Red Bull simply because the margins to the rest of the grid would be smaller, the drivers around him better, and he'd find it more difficult to come through the field if qualified low top 10. If you want a comparable example, you could always look at Button, who's never been the best qualifier.
Eddie Jordan seems to think RBR will opt for Daniel. It's over then folks, go home. Truthfully, I'd rather Raikkonen at RBR and Dan at either Lotus or Ferrari. I just don't want to see him turned into Vettel's Saint Bernard.
At least Ricciardo will have a car capable of showing some speed in. I don't want Kimi at RBR, because he'll end up getting bored of the media work, and sod off elsewhere again.
I'm pretty sure that Red Bull is not the worse team to be at If a driver is not keen on the PR stuff. Certainly there could be worse places to be such as McLaren.
Robin Frijns has been dropped by Hilmer Motorsport in GP2. Hopefully he finds another seat before the season's out...
Dear Bernie Ecclestone, The point of GP2 was for it to be a low-cost formula in order to stop pay drivers coming in and dominating the sport. Due to your tight-fistedness, this has failed and now as you will plainly see a talented driver has just lost his seat because someone else has paid more. Please will you sort this out. Yours sincerely, F1 fans everywhere
Pfft. I told you. It's only going to get worse. Anybody seen Danny Juncadella's post on twitter? DTM driver, tested for Williams at the YDT.
Frijns was lucky to be with Hilmer for as long as he was. He may have a better junior record than most, but he came with no money and ended up getting beaten by his average teammate. Happy for Quaife-Hobbs!
We've seen so many drivers with excellent junior records fail at F1. Jan Magnussen was probably the biggest surprise of all when he completely flopped at Stewart alongside Barrichello. This guy beat Senna's record of most F3 wins in a season after all. His jnr record suggest Rubens was going to get an ass-whopping but Magnussen never looked like getting close. What you can never tell is how weak some of the lower formula's are which these drivers seemed to shine at, especially when they race in countries with no major series, just offshoots. There wiil always be someone who is the next best thing and then for some reason just end up failing. Until they get to F1, there is no real way of knowing who 'deserves' to be on the F1 grid.
True... and conversely, there are some drivers with some not so stellar records who have went on to become very capable F1 drivers (Kobayashi, Chandhok).
Which is another area that I think the current system fails in - where are the opportunities for youngsters to drive F1 machinery in anger? Don't mention the Young Drivers' Tests because we all know they are a joke (Paffett and Turvey are neither young nor likely to be put on the grid any time soon). Hell, we may not like it but this is part of the reason Red Bull why have their controversial junior team, so that they can examine drivers in F1 machinery rather than throwing someone in because they did well in F3. Someone mentioned MotoGP - look at what they've done with factory and satellite bikes and especially now they have CRT machinery - okay, so Colin Edwards is still on the grid potentially keeping a good youngster off a bike, but pretty much everyone on that MotoGP grid has earned that ride, and this year a rookie's turned up who currently leads the world championship! I still think the major issue is that not enough money filters down the system which is what allows only those with good business connections - and increasingly, just those with lots of money - to come to the top of the rankings. But I do also think that F1 actively needs to do more itself to attract good young talent because nowadays only a handful of the top teams can afford to give salaries to their drivers, which is disgraceful and dangerous.
The issue with filtering too much money down the ranks is you would end up with some pretty shoddy operations running teams in the categories, simply because they can turn up and send a few cars out knowing there's money paying for it. You'd have so many father/son teams going on ................. oh wait ..... You have to feel for a lot of drivers who get signed up on young driver programs. Not all of them will make it to F1, but that wouldn't be down to a lack of money or opportunity. Ultimately there are only 24 places on the grid, so someone is always going to get left off.
Simple, no driver is allowed in F1 unless she/he has got into the top 3 of either WSR 3.5 or GP2, winners of Formula 3 Euroseries need not apply to the other series rules in future. *Dusts hands*
A fear of shoddy outfits in the lower levels coming from a sport that once gave rise to Andrea Moda, Lola and Super Aguri Sorry, I'll take it seriously. <angel> It's true that some drivers are always going to get left off and I do think that pay drivers have always been a problem, but this season is especially notable - and Frijns' demise is at least partly due to the fact that he was allegedly in with a shout for the Sauber seat and by the time it was revealed he wouldn't get it, he couldn't get another year in FR3.5 and the major teams in GP2 had already made their signings. Meanwhile next year Sirotkin (who I think is talented and will defend to the death, but has nowhere near as good a junior record as Frijns) is probably going to get that Sauber seat. So it's clear that F1 does have a problem because while a good junior record is not necessarily a guarantor of success, plenty of good young drivers don't even seem to get a look in, perhaps we need some sort of preliminary talent selection system. Interesting thought: if that rule had been in place since the turn of the millennium then 4 world champions currently driving would not have been allowed to join the grid: no Button (joined from Formula 3), Raikkonen (joined from Formula Renault), Alonso (finished 4th in Formula 3000, the precursor to GP2), and if we're being technical we'd probably have no Vettel (he was leading FR3.5 when he was called up to F1 permanently, but had only finished 5th the previous season). Is it really worth it just to keep Susie Wolff off the grid?
Then if the team wants that driver so bad they can pay the £10 million fine I'll apply as well if they want to cut corners.
