Drivers

Nico Erik Rosberg, son of Keijo "Keke" Erik Rosberg, is about to have his 100th Grand Prix meeting this weekend in Hungary. I was about to write my "best wishes" to him in 'his' thread...but I couldn't find one...so, I figured I might as well start it off. What is very interesting is that his father, Keke, took part in 114 Grand Prix races in his entire Formula One career, winning 5 of them - all for Williams from 1982 to 1985 - as well as a World Championship. It's interesting in that Nico is approaching that number quickly and he's already about to finish off his 6th season in a few months...but without a win to his name...and no win in sight given the current pecking order of the cars. Some say Nico is a great talent...while...

Personally, I'd be very keen to know what people here think of Nigel Mansell - who had a very similar record in some ways to Button.... Autosport ran a very interesting article a few weeks about some of Nige's stats - did you know that Mansell only outqualified his team-mate 87-83 over his entire career? Yes Mansell did win 3 times as many races as Button has during his career, but you have to just compare their careers - Mansell won in his 6th season of F1, Button his 7th, but whilst Mansell then had the best car on the grid the following year, Button had just about the worst! Mind (And I know this is off topic) - Mansell regularly gets tarnished for his time at Ferrari as team-mate to Prost - but did you know that the qualifying...

So German born Pascal Wehrelein looks set to be the next new driver on the F1 grid joining the Manor team. If the PR is to be believed he's joining the Manor team at a good time as they set to jump up to the midfield pack. We have been promised that before though. As for Wehrelein himself most fo us will know him as the Mercedes test driver and DTM Champion but will have seen very little of him in single seaters. Thats mainly because Merc took him out of single seaters fairly quickly and he last did a full season of single seaters in 2012 doing mainly F3. His result were top end but not overly impressive but Mercedes obviously saw something. Wahrelein is very much one of Toto Wolffs men and I think that has helped him a lot in finally...

Courtesy of Planet F1 and Tranquility's post in the Belgian PQR thread here's a place to discuss the Williams' No.2 Pastor started his racing career in Italy in the Formula Renault and F3000. He would have been Formula Renault 3.5 Champion if he hadn't been disqualified from a win at Misano in 2006. Moving on to GP2 Pastor raced for 4 seasons, eventually taking the title in 2010. With not insubstantial financial backing from Venezuela's national petroleum company, PDVSA, he took Nico Hulkenberg's seat at Williams for 2011 winning his first point last weekend in Belgium. On a personal level, he is a self proclaimed Socialist and a personal friend of controversial Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, which probably explains the backing...

Just realised we don't have a thread on the young Scot and there's something I have to get off my chest but, first, here's some history. A real sporting family, his cousins are the Franchitti brothers and his step father was Scottish footballer Dougie McCracken (no, I'd never heard of him either but he played for Ayr, Dunbarton and East Fife). As ever, started in karting before moving to Formula Renault with Manor Motorsport. He was Formula 3 Euroseries champion in 2006 before moving on to DTM. With Mercedes backing he was lined up for a drive with Force India in 2009 but FI chose to continue with their '08 driver line up. As test driver in 2010 for FI di Resta finally secured a seat for the 2011 season alongside Adrian Sutil...

So after the news yesterday that Pedro will once again be on the drivers list - this time at HRT - I thought I'd put a thread up to discuss his exploits. Spain's second greatest racing driver - unless Jamie Alguersauri finishes above 9th in Brazil on Sunday - in which case Spain's 3rd greatest racing driver! Started out as test driver for Jordan back in 1998 before getting a race seat with the Arrows team in 1999. He joined the exclusive 'scoring points on your debut' club by finishing 6th in his first race in Australia. Back then points only went down to 6th so it really was an achievment. He did benifit from both Mclaren's breaking down and Schumacher getting a puncture and ending up a lap down. Having said that he was running as...

Pierre Gasly - or as I like to think of him - the last Jedi. For the last decade or more there has been an endless line of talented young drivers all coming off the Red Bull assembly line. Sometimes there were so many that even with 4 seats in F1 some talent had to be filtered out and never made the top level. Those heady days have unfortunately come to and end and Pierre Gasly really does represent the last of the dynasty. Red Bull have invested in younger talent and will come round again but for now its all on hold. Why have they let this happen you ask? Well to be honest they have so much young talent already in fruition that they don't need any new ones coming along. Verstappen and Ricciardo are very much here for the long term and...

Any of you who have been watching the BRDC F4 series on ITV 4 can't help but get a kick out of hearing the name Fittipaldi being said in excitment again. The Fittapaldi in question is the very young Pietro Fittapaldi, Grandson of Emerson, Nephew of Christian and maybe the next in a driver dynesty. For those of you not watching the F4 its a single seater series designed for kids straight out of Karts wanting to get into proffesional single seater racing. The majority of the drivers are so young they probably have to do their homework between sessions but the cars are even and the racing around British tracks is pretty exciting. The main thing is that ITV4 do an hour long highlights package of each 3 race weekend which means the young...

It's going to be a long, slow day at work so here's a profile of Rene Arnoux, one of the most difficult drivers to pigeon hole. On occasions blinding quick, on other occasions a mobile road block who made Jarno Trulli look like a rank amateur. He was also very well balanced with a chip on both shoulders. I first saw Rene racing in 1980 when at the all French Renault team partnered with Jean Pierre Jabouille. There's an interesting comment in his Grandprix.com entry: I think this explains the enigma that is Rene Arnoux, not very technically gifted but a real balls out racing driver as this video of the closing laps of the 1979 French GP demonstrates perfectly. Jean Pierre Jabouille won Renault's first ever Grand Prix at that...

It looks as though this guy has secured the Manor drive though it hasn't been officially announced yet. So who is he? He's an Indonesian race driver aged 23. He's had a lot of single seater experience. For the last four years he's raced in GP2 for different teams with mediocre results ( 14th 19th 15th) until last year 2015, when he raced for Campos and finished 4th. And that was quite a string field. In 2014 when he finished 14the he was partnered with Rossi, but comparing results is difficult because they didn't race against each other all season, there were team changes. Prior to his GP2 career, he raced in GO3 in 2010 he raced for Manor and finished5th , he was also F1 test driver that year. And in 2011 he raced for Marussia...

He's fast, Polish and a bloody brilliant racer. To me Kubica is a special talent and has been very unlucky to not find himself in a top team yet. The thing i like about Kubica is that he's a trier and never gives in say if he was third and had a sniff of second he'd go and chase the second place man down. He's a much toned down version of Lewis Hamilton IMHO he's great at overtaking (Austrailla 2009) exception and if he was in a better car i think he'd a won more races than the current 1 he stands at. Kubica made his F1 debut at the Hungrian GP in 2006 replacing the injuried Jacque Villeneuve for BMW Sauber. He'd outqualified teammate Nick Heidfeld at the time and finished the race in 7th place only to be DSQ for been under weight...

So Roberto Mehri looks set to make his F1 debut for Caterham in the 2014 season, if not at Monza at least at some point of the season. Merhi's sudden step up to F1 is a dramatic change of fortunes for a driver who had basically dropped out of single seater racing two years prior to 2014. At 18 Merhi started racing in the F3 Euroseries and whilst his first two seasons were consistant rather than spectacular he certainly showed he had a sensible head on his shoulders. He jumped into a GP3 seat near the end of the 2010 season and scored a double podium on his first weekend. It was all a pre-cursor to his championship year in F3 Euro in 2011 where he streaked away from the rest of the field. Merhi had one retirement all season with only...