AndreaModa wrote:This is interesting for Williams - Banco do Brasil are on the cars this year, and I think that stems from having Nasr as the reserve driver. Not sure whether Petrobras is tied to him as well - I think there's been reports that there was meant to be a bigger partnership between Petrobras and Williams for next season. I suspect they've been ditched by Nasr for not giving him the opportunities to drive. When you consider that Massa has been pretty average this season, I wonder how much the decision to keep him on will hurt Williams in 2015 and not offer Nasr the drive.
Yes, for 2015 Williams are due to engage in a joint development program with Petrobras, whereby they would become the official fuel and lubricant supplier to the team (they are currently using the standard formulation from Petronas in their cars). Now, at the moment that deal still seems to be in place, but it could be that Nasr's departure undermines that position slightly - it may be the case that Williams can hold onto that deal through Massa's presence in the team, which could play to the Brazilian home market.
This wrote:AustralianStig wrote:I'm going to nominate Sauber as the Silliest Team of the Year. Seriously, how many drivers did they semi-officially 'confirm' to be driving for them in 2015 before they came up with this line-up?
Let me see, Ericsson, Nasr, Van der Garde, Sirotkin, Sutil, Gutierrez and De Silvestro (altough the last one was never serious). This means one thing: Alonso and Vettel are heading to Sauber.
Well, it does seem that Sauber is perhaps the only teams on the grid that Alonso hasn't been linked with in some way by the more fevered press speculation. Still, the number of "reserve" drivers that Sauber has racked up in recent months is a little disconcerting if they are having to sell off reserve driver slots so frequently in an attempt to stay afloat, and I can imagine that this trend is likely to continue into 2015 if their finances take a further battering as their funds from FOM are cut. That said, Nasr is certainly one of the better options they could have gone for in 2015 (though, to be honest, it isn't as if Sauber's line up could have got much worse).
This, I appreciate that this is a bit of a sidestep in the conversation, but, and I've been meaning to ask this for a while, why are you using an image of the Ferrari logo with the 'cavallino rampante' switched for a character from My Little Pony?
Is it a sly reference to an old quote from Jenkinson about Ferrari's engine claims in the past? I recall that Jenkinson made an old joke that, when hearing about Ferrari's claimed power output from their latest engine, that "Evidently they also make the horses smaller in Italy then". Or is this some sort of avatar challenge that I've missed out on?
