Grand Prix Rejects

mario wrote:CarlosFerreira, on a more serious note, do you think that Red Bull might try to get Brendon Hartley into the Toro Rosso this season and give him some experience? After all, he is the official reserve driver for Toro Rosso as well as Red Bull, and although the two teams are officially separate, Red Bull will still have quite a bit of influence in driver signings, I bet (given that they provide the sponsorship). Or, at the very least, the threat of doing so might get Buemi and Jaime to sharpen up a bit...

Back to seriousness then... yeah, I think Red Bull will want to sit Hartley in a Toro Rosso soon. They've been very clear they want him running, and he's been hanging around for a while. I more or less expect one of the Toro Rosso drivers to get booted out soon; Toro Rosso does seem to have the revolving doors of F1.

Intriguing question: were Red Bull to dump Webber for 2011 for some reason (mere speculation of mine!), who would complement Vettel?

CarlosFerreira wrote:

mario wrote:CarlosFerreira, on a more serious note, do you think that Red Bull might try to get Brendon Hartley into the Toro Rosso this season and give him some experience? After all, he is the official reserve driver for Toro Rosso as well as Red Bull, and although the two teams are officially separate, Red Bull will still have quite a bit of influence in driver signings, I bet (given that they provide the sponsorship). Or, at the very least, the threat of doing so might get Buemi and Jaime to sharpen up a bit...

Back to seriousness then... yeah, I think Red Bull will want to sit Hartley in a Toro Rosso soon. They've been very clear they want him running, and he's been hanging around for a while. I more or less expect one of the Toro Rosso drivers to get booted out soon; Toro Rosso does seem to have the revolving doors of F1.

Intriguing question: were Red Bull to dump Webber for 2011 for some reason (mere speculation of mine!), who would complement Vettel?

Rumours are it will be Kimi, but Buemi could be in with a shot if he impresses again this season.

redbulljack14 wrote:Rumours are it will be Kimi, but Buemi could be in with a shot if he impresses again this season.

Those rumours can be traced back to Raikkonen fans who want to see him in the sport but cannot fathom him being in an uncompetitive team. They've seen that Red Bull have expanded their sponsorship in the WRC to include the Citroen Junior Team and have taken it to mean that Red Bull have earmarked Raikkonen for a 2011 drive.

Ok I'm going to be brave and say that Schumacher will be the next to escape rejectdom. Racing in a brand new team, in car with minimal testing and with no GP2 experience last year this youngster has the world at his feet if he can only hold onto the seat.

Rumours are it will be Kimi, but Buemi could be in with a shot if he impresses again this season.

I know it makes sense but Buemi would have to really impress, mind you how much would Kimi want to come to team with reliability issues right now. For that matter how much does Vettel want to stay with a team that chucks away wins.

Intriguing question: were Red Bull to dump Webber for 2011 for some reason (mere speculation of mine!), who would complement Vettel?

It is interesting to consider that the more you look at all the teams, the driver line ups don't look that set. We could see a lot of movement mid season in the mid and lower teams driver line up.

Thoughts?

I think you mean Senna, not Schumacher.

shinji wrote:I think you mean Senna, not Schumacher.

I think you're right. Major Lapsus Linguae there; Freud would be proud.

shinji wrote:I think you mean Senna, not Schumacher.

I was just assuming it was somebody's attempt at humour...

CarlosFerreira wrote:

mario wrote:CarlosFerreira, on a more serious note, do you think that Red Bull might try to get Brendon Hartley into the Toro Rosso this season and give him some experience? After all, he is the official reserve driver for Toro Rosso as well as Red Bull, and although the two teams are officially separate, Red Bull will still have quite a bit of influence in driver signings, I bet (given that they provide the sponsorship). Or, at the very least, the threat of doing so might get Buemi and Jaime to sharpen up a bit...

Back to seriousness then... yeah, I think Red Bull will want to sit Hartley in a Toro Rosso soon. They've been very clear they want him running, and he's been hanging around for a while. I more or less expect one of the Toro Rosso drivers to get booted out soon; Toro Rosso does seem to have the revolving doors of F1.

Intriguing question: were Red Bull to dump Webber for 2011 for some reason (mere speculation of mine!), who would complement Vettel?

It's certainly true that Toro Rosso is not exactly famous for looking after its drivers, and I'm pretty sure that the Red Bull team are interested to see what Hartley can do in the cockpit. So, the only question is how long it'll be before one of the current drivers is kicked out (because, let's be honest, it is when, not if, when it comes to Toro Rosso). I think that the switch will probably be about halfway into the season, going by previous trends.

As for the Webber question, firstly I must state that I think it is unlikely that Webber would actually leave in 2011 - he is getting on very well with the team, and is still quick enough to hold a place on merit. But, were it to be the case that he leaves the team in 2011, there are a few options. Red Bull could promote the better driver from Toro Rosso to the main team - possible, but I think that they'd prefer to pick up a more experienced driver.

If Vettel is still around (Mercedes are said to be very keen to get their hands on him - but how keen Vettel would be to get his hands on a Mercedes is another matter), it would make sense to pair him up with a solid points scorer who has a consistant race pace. I'll throw a wild card suggestion in here for Kubica, as he has been drawing attention from the big teams - Ferrari are said to be interested in him. Heidfeld might fit the role, since he is good at giving detailed feedback and would help push development of the car.

I wouldn't give the 'Kimi to Red Bull' rumours too much credence, however - Kimi is enjoying himself much more in rallying now (he is actually becoming much more open with the press, and seems more relaxed there), and I don't think he wants to come back to F1.

mario wrote:I wouldn't give the 'Kimi to Red Bull' rumours too much credence, however - Kimi is enjoying himself much more in rallying now (he is actually becoming much more open with the press, and seems more relaxed there), and I don't think he wants to come back to F1.

Don't be so sure.

Once Michael bottles it and storms out of Mercedes, it won't be Nick racing as his replacement, it'll be Kimi.
Where did I get this idea from? A photo of a file on the Merc pitwall containing 3 names: Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen. Only minutes after the photo went online it was taken down again by Sutton, but maybe someone gave them a hint to do so...
Maybe I'm reading too far into nothing, but it's worth mentioning at least right?

kostas22 wrote:

mario wrote:I wouldn't give the 'Kimi to Red Bull' rumours too much credence, however - Kimi is enjoying himself much more in rallying now (he is actually becoming much more open with the press, and seems more relaxed there), and I don't think he wants to come back to F1.

Don't be so sure.

Once Michael bottles it and storms out of Mercedes, it won't be Nick racing as his replacement, it'll be Kimi.
Where did I get this idea from? A photo of a file on the Merc pitwall containing 3 names: Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen. Only minutes after the photo went online it was taken down again by Sutton, but maybe someone gave them a hint to do so...
Maybe I'm reading too far into nothing, but it's worth mentioning at least right?

I try not to read too much into these things but you can't just ignore it. I have no idea why Kimi would be interested in Mercades though, maybe they can pay him the wages he demands. However, as far as this season goes I see Heidfeld being called in for any Merc driver if they miss races.

Schumacher's still a reject!

chrismcn wrote:Schumacher's still a reject!

Nope, he's won 7 World Championships, not a reject.

Tealy wrote:

kostas22 wrote:

mario wrote:I wouldn't give the 'Kimi to Red Bull' rumours too much credence, however - Kimi is enjoying himself much more in rallying now (he is actually becoming much more open with the press, and seems more relaxed there), and I don't think he wants to come back to F1.

Don't be so sure.

Once Michael bottles it and storms out of Mercedes, it won't be Nick racing as his replacement, it'll be Kimi.
Where did I get this idea from? A photo of a file on the Merc pitwall containing 3 names: Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Kimi Raikkonen. Only minutes after the photo went online it was taken down again by Sutton, but maybe someone gave them a hint to do so...
Maybe I'm reading too far into nothing, but it's worth mentioning at least right?

I try not to read too much into these things but you can't just ignore it. I have no idea why Kimi would be interested in Mercades though, maybe they can pay him the wages he demands. However, as far as this season goes I see Heidfeld being called in for any Merc driver if they miss races.

Sorry to drag this up, but I didn't realise that things had progressed since my last comment. It is true that the Mercedes guys would have heard from Mclaren about what a strong driver Kimi was whilst he was there (they certainly respected him, as he was said to be metronomically consistent with his lap times, and very committed to the team), and would probably have floated the idea of signing up Kimi when he was pushed out of Ferrari. However, I would suspect that if he was offered the chance to go to Mercedes, he might not accept it, for the same reason that Button chose to leave the team - they don't look like they are going to be able to win this year, on current pace.
And whilst Button may have a playboy exterior, and Kimi puts on a seemingly surly demeanour, due to his hatred of the press (several have said that he is deliberately uncommunicative with the press so they leave him alone), both of them are going to want to have the best car possible, and be pretty ruthless about how they get themselves in that car.

As for Kimi's salary demands, I can't see Mercedes willingly coughing up €15million a year for Kimi's services, when they refused to pay Button half that. Hell, Schumacher is being paid a third of that. In fact, you've got to bear in mind that most of the drivers have taken a major cut in wages this year - with the exception of Alonso, who has received a major pay hike, courtesy of Santander's backing of Ferrari. Besides, even if Kimi offered a big pile of cash, considering how he hated the media attention and all the politicking in the sport, I think that he'd turn it down and do what he is happiest with doing - which at the moment is rallying.

shinji wrote:

chrismcn wrote:Schumacher's still a reject!

Nope, he's won 7 World Championships, not a reject.

I suppose that the original poster was having a dig at the fact that Schumacher's current finishes would see him as a reject driver, if we were to take them in isolation.
On the other hand, Schumacher is at risk of ending up with the "hang up the keys" award, taking it off Mansell - Eddie Jordan has certainly said that Schumacher needed this like a hole in the head, and unless Schumacher can turn things around, he is going to have the press all over his back. They have already started to stick the boot in http://www.f1technical.net/news/14525?s ... 3beb23f393
It does show the pressure of expectation, and how the press have become much more aggressive - imagine if Lauda tried to do his comeback today.

Definitely Hulkenburg. Petrov will probably follow shortly after.