Quote from CSF :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_GP2_Series_season

Heikki was 2nd in a close run thing in the first season of GP2 to multiple Grand Prix winner Nico Rosberg.

GP2 has been dreadful in 2012 and 2013, with poor fields. I thought his title was as bad as it could get, but 2013 trumped it all with the dreadful results for all title contenders.

Well Petrov, Perez and more decent F1 drivers never won the title. If you're there at the end, you win the championship. I wouldn't class Maldonado as particularly amazing but he can win as he proved. When he's not smashing into stuff he actually looks like the full package driver.


Valsecchi beat Luiz Razia (who is a massive talent) and also beat Guttierez who is now obviously, in F1. So say what you want. It's on the table for all to see that Valsecchi is at least decent enough for F1.

Just take a look who finished 3rd in the championship in 2005. That shows what a mad season in GP2 it was on 05. It was mayhem, about half the field managed to win a race.

Or why not just fire all the reserve drivers. Surely they can find "more experienced" drivers with this logic... With this Valsecchi case being a reserve driver totally lost its meaning. At least don't make him look like a fool, making him believe once he can drive the car, because as it seems it will never happen. Poor guy is just a ghost at Lotus.

Yea its a massively sad affair..

Quote from BlueFlame :

Well Petrov, Perez and more decent F1 drivers never won the title. If you're there at the end, you win the championship. I wouldn't class Maldonado as particularly amazing but he can win as he proved. When he's not smashing into stuff he actually looks like the full package driver.


Valsecchi beat Luiz Razia (who is a massive talent) and also beat Guttierez who is now obviously, in F1. So say what you want. It's on the table for all to see that Valsecchi is at least decent enough for F1.

Just take a look who finished 3rd in the championship in 2005. That shows what a mad season in GP2 it was on 05. It was mayhem, about half the field managed to win a race.

Yes who finished 3rd a mile behind the top two. Half the grid didn't win races in 05, but you even had Jon Lancaster winning in 2013! And lets not forget the guy who was dominating at half way in 2013 never even scored a point in the last half of the season. It's utterly crazy. Theres a good reason the likes of Magnussen are being placed in F3.5 rather than GP2, its too expensive for good drivers who don't have big bucks, look at Frinjs this season, poor seat and out half way through because he ran out of cash.

It took Valsechi 5 years to win GP2, or look remotely decent, he had 1 win before his title season. Not up to it, and certainly wouldn't have slotted straight in like Heikki has done.

to be fair to lotus they are battling for millions of dollars. If it was earlier in season I would say shame on them. Yeah I feel for Valescchi, but glad for Heikki too.

Quote from CSF :

It took Valsechi 5 years to win GP2, or look remotely decent, he had 1 win before his title season. Not up to it, and certainly wouldn't have slotted straight in like Heikki has done.

Well my point is, it's impossible to say. People though Kobayashi and Petrov were shit. They came to F1 and far exceeded expectations.

Spent entire fp1 thinking ROS was Rossi and was like dayummmm.

Anyways

I thought heikki drove really really well in 2011 for caterham and definitely deserved another title. Problem was that his 2012 season wasn't as good which eventually made him look much worse than he is.

Caterham and marussia are both living in their totally own f1 world and when driving those cars it is practically impossible to impress anyone. 4 seasons in F1 and not even the slightest chance to even score one point tells everything about those turd cars. And even being so bad their only possible direction is down (hrt).

I think heikki is still a different and better driver than he was in his mclaren days. His problem never was qualifying though but the race pace. While he did fine yesterday I think the truth will be revealed in the race. Has he got the speed. Personally I'm carefully optimistic. Grosjean is definitely driving at his peak now and looking at the long stints grosjean was faster than kovalainen:
http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/201 ... friday-practice-analysis/
How much of that is down to fuel I don't know but looking at that graph heikki was about 0.6s slower per lap than grosjean on his long stint.


Oh and it does not look good for hulkenberg:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/111351
Lotus needs to build more factories for 2014 if they are going to have grosjean&maldonado driving. The amount of spare parts those two will go though, bernie needs to buy another jumbo too I think .

Quote from Bmxtwins :

Spent entire fp1 thinking ROS was Rossi and was like dayummmm.

Anyways

wow, u suk

Bottas putting on a fantastic show. Nothing but kind words for him from the NBC cast.

spooodo vale round the outside.

Kovalainen, what a great choice, dat experience he has, 0 points.

Some nice overtakes by Alo, Bottas and Button, but that's it.

Rosberg dives as sweet as animal gayrape sex.

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

Kovalainen, what a great choice, dat experience he has, 0 points.

I'm pretty sure that Valsecchi wouldnt have done any better.

Quote from Iginla :

I'm pretty sure that Valsecchi wouldnt have done any better.

Care to explain? Don't think anyone saw Valsecchi driving, so I dunno why everyone thinks he sucks. But what would it matter if he did worse? Epic amount of experience 0 pts vs. no experience 0 pts, not a big deal.

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

Care to explain? Don't think anyone saw Valsecchi driving, so I dunno why everyone thinks he sucks. But what would it matter if he did worse? Epic amount of experience 0 pts vs. no experience 0 pts, not a big deal.

Heikki, after not racing for a year, jumping into a totally new car and in really short notice gets 8th position on qualifying is pretty good result, tbh I don't think Kimi would have done much better than him in Q. In the race he was driving with no KERS, bad pit stop and problem in front wing, so surely he would've brought some points, but the start he messed up himself. Though, I still have to agree that since Lotus is quite far away from Ferrari and Mercedes on points, it would have been a nice gift for Valsecchi to give him the seat. Anyway, if something happens, surely Heikki is more capable of getting points than Valsecchi.

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

Care to explain? Don't think anyone saw Valsecchi driving, so I dunno why everyone thinks he sucks. But what would it matter if he did worse? Epic amount of experience 0 pts vs. no experience 0 pts, not a big deal.

Front wing damage, poor pitstops. Bad result but whose fault it really was? Did he break his front wing or did it break on its own? Was this your first ever F1 race you watched?

Quote from Hyperactive :

Front wing damage, poor pitstops. Bad result but whose fault it really was? Did he break his front wing or did it break on its own? Was this your first ever F1 race you watched?

Oh please. That sounds like you want to blame it on the team or other drivers. He was already 11th when he pitted. Yes, he had wing damage, but as you say wings don't break on their own. Obviously it was someone else's fault... Unfortunately it wasn't shown on TV.

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

but as you say wings don't break on their own.

http://i.imgur.com/n6mtE09.gif

Quote from Töki (HUN) :

Oh please. That sounds like you want to blame it on the team or other drivers.

No. I just want to hear the facts before I crucify the guy. The start was poor. The first laps were poor. But what wrecked his race looks like it wasn't his fault at all.

Whether heikki drove good or bad is impossible to tell atm.

Well what we can know is that Heikki drove average. He even said on Skysports F1 that the result probably came down to his own performance and didn't mention the wing change or anything as a factor.

So think what you will, but it's only natural. You're Finnish.

What a boring race, i was there and not even the sounds of the cars could keep me awake... sleepy as hell.

Yea, I'll admit I fell asleep.

Well, I honestly can't 'watch' an F1 race unless I have my laptop open and my iPod playing music.

A note for my fellow Americans, was it just me or was the NBC coverage complete shit? Besides the audio issues they had in the post race, Will Buxton was awkward as **** on the grid and I kept noticing errors they made in reporting the race. Not to mention, all the commentary seemed to have a good 2-3 second delay.

Way worse than usual.

I agree. Also the qualifying wasnt live they put womens freaking curling on instead...

No to mention the indy car houston advert in the bottom corner and that was weeks ago...

Also, did you notice thay they didn't even pick up on maldonado's wing flying apart im t1?