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Well I have an idea who won't be at HRT next year! ;-)

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I think you should do what you want.

It's your forum and I paid the bills this year..

and if people don't like it they shouldComplain here

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/formula ... 871312.stm

Trulli confirmed at Lotus.

Filippi??? Oh dear God, he can't even beat Ceccon and Tambay...

He was pretty good in GP2 this year

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Isn't Maldonado safe at Williams? Or i've missed something since the news has evolved relating Raikkonen?

Pastor is safe.

Unless this Qatari bank turns up with $40 million or something (half for Kimi's salary, half for the team to replace Pastor).

Or maybe Genii will pay to have Grosjean inserted.

Sutil certainly doesn't have the money that Pastor does.

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

Perez
I have the feeling he could have had much more points but had bad luck, and Di Resta only impressed me in 1 race so far.

All rookies have impressed me during the year. Although D'Ambrosio has impressed me the least.

Di Resta and Perez have both been impressive. I still think Sutil is the better driver of the two F-India's, so not sure why he's looking at back of the grid teams. Shame.

Ricciardo has done very well against more experienced team mates.

Maldonado has recently looked better than Rubens, despite his ability to crash at some point every weekend (some things never change).

D'Ambrosio... Hard to judge. Early in the season he looked a good match for Glock, but less so recently.

Quite a lot of variables still:

Renault:
Kubica if fit & Petrov.
If not, Grosjean and Petrov, unless Senna rings up his Brazilian backers. He hasn't done enough to convince the team, hence RoGro will be practicing in Abby Dabby & Brazil. Petrov already has a contract remember.

Force India:
di Resta & Hulk. Judging by the BBC interview, Hulkenberg has the race seat and di Resta seems likely. Sutil shafted.

STR:
Alguersuari & whoever Marko decides. I mean, both deserve to stay - Alguersuari more than Buemi. Possibly Ricciardo.

Sauber:
Kobayashi & Perez (durr)

Williams:
If Frank gets $20m odd from Qatar and Kimi agrees, then Kimi & Pastor. If not, Sutil & Pastor. I think Rubi is doomed regardless.

Lotus:
Kovy (Woo) & Trulli (Boo)

Virgin:
Glock & whoever stumps up the most. Remember they operate on £40m a year, so they need a good pay driver. Chandhok, Pic, whoever. Hopefully Wickens, he bloody deserves it.

HRT:
Hopefully not the Chav. Maybe Red Bull will 'loan' someone out - Vergne?

Not out of the question to consider Nico Rosberg and Massa doing a straight swap either.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Why? One (barely reliable) German media outlet mentions Rosberg and Ferrari and all of a sudden it's not out of the question that they will swap seats.

You say Senna hasn't done enough, but what's enough? The car isn't great and he'd had barely had any time in the car prior to Belgium, so how's he supposed to perform well and with a fair chance? Since he's been onboard he's scored the same number of points as Petrov hasn't he? Plus he's done ok with the equipment and only had a couple of poor races. It was same with Grosjean in 2009. Due to the testing regs he didn't know the car, the car was dog shit and people proclaimed he didn't deserve to be in F1.

Agree, I don't know how people couldn't be impressed with Senna considering the circumstances. He jumped in halfway through the season and was pretty much immediately on the pace of his teammate.

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Well the first immediate thing he did was take out a bunch of cars, ruining a good weekend. Since then he hasn't really been anywhere, and Petrov has slipped down the grid too. Frankly sacking Heidfeld is showing up for the bad decision it was now, as he was the only one with the ability to setup a car and now it's gone from promising to terrible.

Renaults treatment of drivers over the years has been pretty poor.

Yeah, because Heidfeld's input was really bringing the car up the field.

All that car has done since the start of the year is go backwards, and considering its performance level at the point Senna came in, he's done well in qualifying (Q3 3 times out of 6) and beaten Petrov 3 times out of 6 in the race. A collision in the first corner of the first race (the only major one Senna's had) pales in comparison to Petrov's propensity to trash cars.

So considering Senna's come in 2/3rds of the way into the season with minimal testing, yeah I'd say that's a good performance.

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Hiring Heidfeld had to be a quick decision based on the circumstances of last year and was probably the best short term solution but looking further afield you're not going to build a team around Nick.

For 2011 Nick might be the better option but in terms of giving Senna some invaluable experience for the future Renault made the right choice...

Yeah, he was. Before Heidfeld left they scored 68 points. Since he's left they've scored 6.

66 actually. 30 of those were scored in the first 2 races. Over the remaining 9 races they averaged 4 points per race - in Nick's final 4 races the average was 1.5 points per race.

Heidfeld's not at fault for that slide in performance, but if your point is that they'd be doing better had they'd kept him on, the results don't speak to that.

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Average finishing position with Heidfeld/Petrov (excluding DNFs) - 7.7
Average finishing position with Petrov/Senna (excluding DNFs) - 12.4

And that isn't due to Senna alone, Petrovs performance took a significant downturn after that. There is no doubt at all in my mind that Heidfeld was keeping that team propped up by doing the setup work, it's the same reason BMW hired him over Pizzonia back in the day, because he was good at that stuff. They were consistatnly fighting for points before, now they are fighting to be the best of the rest, with the occasional points thrown in, which has only happened 3 times.

The final 4 races which Heidfeld took part in also including 2 DNFs. One from a car failure, which is why I excluded DNFs in the stats.

So if Heidfeld is the setup guru you speak of, and a major loss to Renault that Senna can't hope to fill, why did the team go from 2 podiums in the first 2 races to consistent 8th, 9th and 10th places in the remainder of Heidfeld's season? I don't really see what Heidfeld was keeping propped up there, it hardly speaks to strong ongoing car and setup development. It was a consistent downward slide which has continued after he left.

The original point of this discussion was whether Senna has done enough to deserve the seat next season, and regardless what you feel there I don't think it can be argued that the team was showing any signs of improving before him with Heidfeld.

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Setup development and car development are completely different things. This is also highlighted by the fact there is no testing now days, giving driver a more limited role in development than they had before the testing ban. Heidfeld was widely known for his setup work, and the stats speak for themselves. You can say say that they dropped after 2 races, that's fine, but fighting for 8th means they were fighting Mercedes. Now they fighting STRs and Force Indias. Whilst they may not have been making their way up the grid with Heidfeld, I never claimed for him to be pushing them to front. I simply said he was the one doing the setup work and getting the most out of a rather mediocre car. As soon as he left, they dropped down the grid. This is not a co-incidence.