Yesterday, Marussia has announced that 2012 GP2 runner up Luiz Razia will line up alongside Max Chilton on the 2013 grid in the Murussia F1 team. Razia replaces Timo Glock who should have been their lead driver for this season, until his contract was cancelled two weeks ago. It will mean that the team will be fielding two rookies, with no Grand Prix starts between them.
Like I said a few weeks back, I would have gone for race experience driver at Marussia rather than Razia to be honest. But, the Brazilian GP2 race winner had been strongly rumoured as the team’s second driver for a few weeks though, so good luck to Luiz Razia driving at Marussia this season.
Meanwhile last week, it was confirmed that Caterham has choose Giedo van der Garde as their second driver, which means he will be team-mates to Charles Pic's this season. Which ends the hopes of the former Caterham drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov getting a 2013 drive in Formula 1.
It was over a month a go that was more than curtain that Heikki Kovalainen has not offered a new contract at Caterham this season. While, Vitaly Petrov could have got the remaining seat at Caterham, more than likely he has lost sponsorship from Russia, which possibly cost him a drive in Formula 1 this season. But personally, this possibly be a good thing for both drivers, they could try different series such as DTM, FIA WEC and have an opportunity to win races in those series or even be a test driver in one of the top teams (recently confirmed a few weeks back Pedro de la Rosa is a Ferrari test driver for the team).
And as for Giedo van der Garde, same as Luiz Razia in the perous paragraphs, good luck to his new challenge at Caterham this season.
Which means it leaves only one seat on the Formula 1 grid for this season at Force India, where the identity of Paul di Resta’s team mate is due to be announced within two weeks time. Jules Bianchi and Adrian Sutil remain the front runners for the drive, with the possibly that Jules Bianchi will bring in V6 Ferrari Turbo engines for 2014 at a discount price to the team if he stay at the team for the next two seasons rather than Adrian Sutil who will possibly bring in sponsorship from Germany. But, personally if I was team boss at Force India I would go with former Sauber F1 driver Kamui Kobayashi, due to mainly his race experience and talent, also his six million pound sponsorship which has been rumoured with.
But, time will tell who's on the grid for 2013 in a few weeks time in Melbourne for the first race of the season.
End of blog for now. New post soon. Bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment