Roberto Merhi

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 one 5th place blotting a perfect record of top 4 finishes. When you think that there were 27 races in the F3 Euro that year then once again consistancy is the word you have to use.

Unfortunately Merhi did not have a major amount of funding and found no seat in single seater racing in 2012 so he joined the Merc junior team in DTM for two years. I don't really follow DTM so I can't really comment on his performance there but his results don't look amazing.

It was a bit of a shock in 2014 when it was announced that Mehri would be driving in the WSR. The commentators seemed very confused. Despite being out of single seater racing for 2 years he scored a 2nd place on his first race out (at Monza by the way) and, whilst it was obvious he was getting used to the machinary for the few rounds after, his form gradually started to return to the point where he has won 2 out of the last 3 races and finished 2nd in the other one. Merhi is the only driver to really have given Sainz Jr a problem in a straight fight this year in WSR and had just pulled himself into a position to challenge him for the title.

Merhi's move back into single seater racing was obviously very calculated after picking up his Russian backers. He even raced at British F3 round at Spa during the WSR break to 'keep him sharp' Merhi comes into Caterham with a massive amount of race experience and experience at jumping into different types of cars and learning them quickly. He also has a level head and a massive reputation for consistancy. All of these can only be good things when coming into F1 but ultimately whilst his pedigree is good (think above Chilton and Ericsson but below Bianchi) its not spectacular and unfortunately when coming into a back end team mid-season only spectacular will stop you picking up a reputation of 'pay-driver' or 'mediocre'.

He certainly seems a lovely guy who genuinally loves racing so I hope he does well and I expect him to get the best of Ericsson. However when all you can say about a team bringing in a driver is 'they could have picked worse' you know you're not expecting a world beater.
 
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Mephistopheles - mare eeee - or thats what they say in commentary.

I'm actually quite happy to see him get a chance in F1 as he was quite impressive in WSR 3.5 last year and has done well in single seaters before - he actually won the European F3 Title Mr Vestappen!

He was incredible in a race in the wet in 3.5 last year. He was like 3 seconds a lap faster than anyone during the race and to say its a spec series then thats impressive.
 
Merhi does the race distance in his first race then.

A lot of drivers complaining that he wasn't fast enough under the safety car. Apparently he stuck to the delta time rather than speeding up to catch the safety car.
 
That must have been what Raikkonen was complaining about when he asked if he could overtake.

An easy mistake to make though, in your first race.
The SC rules are a bit silly and over-complicated.
 
I think he'd have been criticised more for going too fast under the safety car.

Incidently an hour after the race Merhi had to jump on a plane to Spain to go testing for Pons Racing in the 3.5 series. The fact he is doing that means one of two things. Either he knows he won't be in the Manor all season or he can't afford to buy out his contract with Pons. As he has hardly any funding at the moment it might be the latter.
 
Merhi has in fact done a full days testing of WSR 3.5 today in Spain. He was one of the first drivers out this morning and last on track. Only 13th fastest but blimey thats a good fitness level ain't it?
 
So I'm massively dissapointed with Merhi this season. For a former European F3 champ and someone who ran Carlos Sainz close in 3.5 last year I expected him to be well in front of Will Stevens who doesn't have that pedigree. Instead he's having his behind handed him on a plate. very dissapointing.

I'm sure Manor will stick with him until the end of the European Season before sticking Jordan King in the car in order to get round next years super licence rules soaybe he has time to come back but right now he is graded a D-
 
Autosport is still narking me off. They seem unable to believe that Stevens is capable of beating Merhi so we've had several excuses trotted out including the fact that Stevens is lighter than Merhi. I can't wait to see the revised 15 version Manor expected to run in August, with the up to date Ferrari thingy in the back, there will be no excuses.
 
What... the... hell was that? Going that slow on a straight with a relatively high speed corner behind it isn't too bright, but not paying attention to the cars in front of you and slamming into the back of them is just as stupid. :facepalm:
 
It's possible he was slowing down to do a burnout on his grid slot for the next race, something that they had been told in the driver briefing specifically not to do which is why the punishment is so severe. :clip:
 
To be fair to Lafiti he was in a drag tace to the line with Dillman so had to floor it. I guess he just didn't expect Merhi to be stupidly stopped on the start finish straight.

Merhi by the way won't care he's excluded from the WSR races. Now if he had a 1 race ban from the F1 for it then I'm sure he'd learn more.
 
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