(photo credit: Flickr/Sum_of_Marc)

Well, everyone kind of knew this was coming. There was talk that clearly Jarno Trulli would be the first to go this season, but who knew it would be after one week of testing?

Trulli has had to defend his contract for what feels like years now, and finally the Caterham team dumped him. Vitaly Petrov, who raced for Lotus Renault last season, will replace him. Petrov had been linked to the team for a couple weeks.

Trulli is now without a drive for the first time since his F1 debut in 1997. It’s also the first time there will be no Italians on the grid since 1970.

Team boss Tony Fernandes says the decision was not an easy one to make. Fernandes said the decision was made with an economic factor in mind, as well as a need to move to a new chapter for the slightly new team.

By economic factor of course, he is probably referring to the upcoming race and Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in 2014.

Goodbye, Trulli Train. We will probably not miss the times you held everyone up.

One cannot get writing a season review right away when a team drops a driver in favor of another immediately after it ends!

Now to just get used to calling them Marussia instead of Virgin Racing.

Marussia signed Charles Pic to replace Jerome D’Ambrosio after one season and announced it shortly after the race yesterday. The 21 year old French driver did testing for the team at the young drivers test in Abu Dhabi.

Pic has raced in GP2 for the past two seasons. He finished 4th in the championship this year.

Team principal John Booth said in a statement, “I’m very pleased to welcome Charles to Marussia Virgin Racing as Timo’s team-mate for 2012. We naturally keep a close eye on the junior formulae and Charles is certainly someone we have been watching over the past few years. The real barometer however was our Young Driver Test in Abu Dhabi last week, where we put him through a series of tough tests to thoroughly evaluate his potential.

“This was his first time in a Formula One car so it should have been quite daunting, however Charles was extremely focused on what needed to be done and absolutely rose to the challenge. He continued to improve in every area but his race simulation work particularly caught our eye.”

As for D’Ambrosio, Booth thanked him for his work and wished him the best of luck elsewhere.

Other teams and drivers are being linked together even a day after the end of the season.

Daniel Ricciardo is rumored to be replacing Jarno Trulli at Caterham (known as Team Lotus this past season). Trulli is under contract with the team, and Tony Fernandes, team principal of Caterham, has said he doesn’t see any reason why Trulli wouldn’t be racing for the team in 2012.

Rumor has it that Red Bull want to keep Ricciardo racing, but do not want to replace their current lineup, and the deal with HRT will not continue. Then Jaime Alguersuari will go to HRT to make it an all Spanish lineup for the Spanish team, with Jean-Eric Vergne joining Sebastien Buemi at Toro Rosso.

Personally, I think Red Bull needs to get Vergne somewhere on the grid next season. They just have way too many talented young drivers in their program, and it makes this extremely difficult. Time to buy a third team!

Photo from Flickr user sumisso.

Martin Brundle has a lovely article over at the BBC F1 news page. Obviously from the title, it relates more to the Schumacher incident, but also talks about Sebastian Vettel and I agree with Brundle so much. It seems so routine and robotic at this point for Vettel to keep on winning, but he is human, he is absolutely passionate about what he does, and it is not just simple for him to win.

Remember that amazing pass on Alonso? Well, turns out Vettel asked the stewards to look at Alonso’s blocking after the race. Nothing was done, same with Schumacher. The overall outlook it seems is that Schumacher was pretty aggressive.

I would assume though overall that because Hamilton finished ahead of Schumacher and Vettel finished ahead of Alonso, nothing was done. But I have a feeling it also means the stewards might not take too kindly to aggressive blocking in the next race.

Now onto other news!

It seems the battle for the Lotus name will be coming to an end. I know Will Buxton mentioned this back during the Belgian Grand Prix as a possibility, but it seems to be happening now. Team Lotus will drop their name, and the Lotus Renault team will be able to take it. Tony Fernandes, boss of Team Lotus, also owns a GP2 team named Caterham AirAsia. It’s possible that they will switch to using this name for the Formula 1 team also. The best part of having Lotus and Caterham in Formula 1 will be how very NOT British they are. (Okay so current Team Lotus is based in England, but that’s not the same as the real Team Lotus days.)

Team Lotus has a few other things going on: Italian driver Jarno Trulli is set for another whinetastic season with the team next year. How do I know it will be whinetastic? Well, that might have to do with a certain reserve driver named Karun Chandok. The Indian driver is backed to drive in his home grand prix, and Tony Fernandes has stated he would replace Trulli because Heikki Kovalainen is the number one driver for the team.

Ouch. Note that the one year contract story broke on Sunday, and the replacement at the Indian Grand Prix/assertion that he’s the number two driver is from today. Surprise!

Vitantonio Liuzzi received a five grid spot penalty for the chaos caused by his off at the start of yesterday’s race. He will be starting 29th at the Singapore Grand Prix. No, seriously, they should consider putting him back far enough that he can’t be “forced into the grass.”

Lewis Hamilton dominated today’s practice sessions, showing us all just how excited he was for this weekend. In both sessions this morning, Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Mark Webber, and Sebastian Vettel were in the top five, with just over half a second between first place and fifth place.

Mark Webber crashed during the first practice session, but was back out for the second. He was the only driver to crash despite plenty of others locking up their tires. Bruno Senna drove around in a Lotus Renault so everyone could show a picture of Ayrton Senna in another black and gold Lotus and make dreamy comments.

Jarno Trulli was back in his car, and was over half a second quicker than teammate Heikki Kovalainen in the second session, a rare occasion in any setting. His car has had many power steering issues, which look to be solved now.

Finally I would like to end this with…
Second Practice Session Recap, written as a SPEED announcer.
Loo-ees Hamilton was first, followed by Fernando Alondo. Mark Hamilton was in fourth. I think I just ran out of whiskey in my coffee cup. What do you mean it’s only 9 in the morning?
Young Mexican rookie Sergio Perez is driving. Young Mexican rookie Sergio Perez had a great finish back in Australia. Young Mexican rookie Sergio Perez is actually just named Sergio Perez.

Seriously dudes…seriously…you have not truly gotten on my nerves until this season. Sunday it’s wishing a driver bad luck. Today it’s an inability to pronounce names that have been in this sport for years. This is not the first time what essentially sounds like “Louise” has come out of one’s mouth, and it’s also not the first appearance of Fernando Alondo, but to have both screw-ups in one hour? Yikes.

Hungaroring Circuit Layout

Friday July 29
Practice Session 1: 4am
Practice Session 2: 8am – live on SPEED

Saturday July 30
Practice Session 3: 5am
Qualifying Session: 8am – live on SPEED

Sunday July 31
Race: 8am – live on SPEED with pre-race show starting at 7:30am

All times eastern. Practice sessions 1 and 3 can be streamed live on SPEEDtv.com

» Continue reading “Hungarian Grand Prix Preview”

Nürburgring F1 Layout

Friday July 22
First Practice Session: 4am
Second Practice Session: 8am – live on SPEED

Saturday July 23
Third Practice Session: 5am
Qualifying: 8am – live on SPEED

Sunday July 24
Race: noon, time delayed and shown on FOX – check local listings

All times eastern. First and second practices stream live on SPEEDtv.com

» Continue reading “German Grand Prix Preview”

This weekend Formula 1 heads to the marvelous Nürburgring in Germany. Pirelli will be trying out a new version of their soft tire compound at the Friday practice sessions. Right now the company does not plan to immediately introduce it, and will work with teams based on how they feel about it. Apparently it will be a bit harder than the current soft tire.

There will be another FOTA Fan Forum this season, this time in Milan at Pirelli’s headquarters, obviously taking place before the Italian Grand Prix. Stefano Domenicali, Nico Rosberg, and Jarno Trulli will be taking part in the panel. Unlike the previous forums in Canada and the UK, this one take place in Italian, but translation into English will be available. If you’re interested and will be in Italy for the Grand Prix, head over to FOTA’s site for details on how to get in!

In other FOTA news, James Allison, Renault’s technical director, has been named head of the FOTA technical group.

Williams’ new chief engineer Mike Coughlan is being sued by Michael Waltrip Racing along with the Williams team. Apparently, Coughlan signed a contract through November 2012 with MWR to work with the NASCAR team but broke the deal in April and joined Williams in June. To be honest, I don’t understand why you would even make a fuss over this dude considering his involvement in Spygate back in 2007, but that’s just me.

Heikki Kovalainen gave a verbal hug of encouragement to his team, saying they should be proud of their accomplishments, despite the high goals they had for this season. They are not quite midpack yet, but they are well on their way if they keep improving.

I figure this is a good article to have every Monday post-race. There’s always something after a race. Someone’s mad at someone else, someone’s mad at something that happened, Jarno Trulli is ranting in his newspaper column…

BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION
This time around I will agree with Trulli, unlike his previous complaints regarding everyone finishing the European Grand Prix. Yes, once again, it’s the silly blown diffuser argument. He says, “Even our engine guys couldn’t figure out what was allowed.” That is somewhat problematic.

It was fascinating though, considering Christian Horner and Martin Whitmarsh were the only two to really talk incessantly about the issue. Horner’s Red Bull Racing team is one of three teams using Renault engines, and Whitmarsh’s McLaren team is one of three using Mercedes engines.

But whatever. It’s done, hopefully.

ORDER ME SOME WHINE
Mark Webber says it was unnecessary for the team to tell him to maintain the gap to teammate Sebastian Vettel, rather than fight him for position. Webber argues that if Alonso failed to finish, they’d be fighting for P1. Christian Horner takes the “what if you idiots crash into each other like you did last year, huh?” route. Honestly, I can’t blame him after the McLaren drivers bumped each other last month.

Team orders are legal, but Horner claimed he would never take a part of them after last year’s use by Ferrari. Mark, you should just probably do what your team asks. I just want to slap both of them.

Oh, Horner hopes that Webber will still be signing a one year contract extension for next season. I would go elsewhere and let them give that seat to some newbie who gets it that he’s second fiddle to Mr. Vettel.

OTHER BITS
Williams says they are looking to keep both Rubens Barrichello and Pastor Maldonado for next season. It will be Barrichello’s 20th Formula 1 season.

Lotus Renault is working on rear exhausts for the German Grand Prix, as they feel their current forward facing ones are not helping them out. Cool concept, but they’ve really fallen back lately. The whole diffuser thing most likely did not help them either.

Ferrari are claiming that their first win of the season will lead them to not “getting carried away.” Well, that’s good to know, as it was just one win. On the less snarky side of things, I will be nice and say it’s good to see some team making improvements to the car rather than hurting it (see above.)

As usual, there is too much going on, but here are three stories of top interests!

TO NEW LANDS!

We’ll start with Martin Whitmarsh’s comments today at the ridiculously awesome FOTA Fan Forum held at the McLaren Mercedes Factory. The team principal says there should be two United States Grands Prix, so that Formula 1 can “conquer” the country.

Oh my. But he has the right idea that the east and west coasts are more the place for the sport. I am actually in fear of going to Austin in June due to the temperatures, to the point I am considering waiting for them to realize the race there should not be in the summer. Nothing against Austin, of course, I am dying to go there during a more temperate month.

He suggests Long Beach and New York. I wish Laguna Seca was F1 ready without some major changes, and like I’ve said before…Watkins Glen. The sport has a lot of work to do to garner more interest in the US first, though. But hey, Whitmarsh has that covered! He understands that F1 is going to have to do a lot more marketing.

» Continue reading “Whitmarsh The Conqueror, HRT Shake-Ups, And Why Jarno Trulli Is Wrong”