Chandhok dropped from German GP

  • Thread starter Thread starter PeterJB
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lpb-nissan-gt-r
Wait they have to pay to drive? they have got it the wrong way around.
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Erm, yeah like all motorsport ever ever ever.

Only the top F1 teams and extremely high profile series like NASCAR have the ability to pay drivers.
Everyone else has to help bring sponsorship or other money. Its just the way it is (motorsports being expensive that is).

The reason is because the equipment, entry and running fees become so high. Even your average karter has to have a fairly decent budget behind him to get anywhere.

HRT are doing nothing new, if a small team can't find the sponsorship, they have to rely on paying drivers or engine deals to help cover the budget. Virgin also have a pay driver in Di Grassi (though he is hired somewhat for skill reasons too), Sutil brings Capri-Sun sponsorship to Force India, Petrov brings Lada to Renault, etc, etc.
Rumour is that Chandhok's sponsors are keeping their money holding out for a potential drive at another team and that they don't want to be the ones funding the 2011 car.

I think its the right way around personally, as the driver is only a component. No different to an engine. If I'm low on money, I'll take a cheaper engine or an engine which comes with money....just like drivers. At the end of the day, for a small team at the backend of the grid, reliable finishes are more important than outright speed.
 
I'm somewhat confident under no evidence that Chandok will race securely with a team next year. A fitting scenario would see him drive for Force India!
 
Yamamoto might end up being the most experienced F1 driver to have never completed a full season in the sport.
 
Any chances of Senna getting to a better seat next year? Or is he sticking with the HRT train?
 
Peter
Any chances of Senna getting to a better seat next year? Or is he sticking with the HRT train?
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All seats are locked out other than Renault and Force India. So, probably not. Virgin, Sauber, Lotus and Williams are likely to keep their current drivers.
 
DonkeyFuzz
I think Yammamoto comes from a high staus family and he pays HRT more money than Senna or Chandhok does so they're keeping him to try and survive in Formula One. I would personally put Christian Klien in.
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I guess they should just call it HRT drivng academy. That way they can get more paying customers to meet their budget by selling seat time and learn the F1 tracks. Maybe they can base their prices based on what track the customer wants to drive in. :sly:
 
I'm thinking force India and Renault will get involved in this. In my view, chandok won't be at hrt next year and liuzzi and petrov will get the sack as well. Renault would want Sutil or Raikonen. So if Sutil left that would mean Force India would have 3 options:
Paul Di Resta
Karun Chandok
Vitaly Peytrov
I'm thinking that they would stick with Di Resta and take Chandok purely because he's Indian. He might be faster than petrov as well.
If chandok goes to Force India and then HRT go bust I would be really happy. Or if they don't qualify for any races because they have Yamamoto.
That's my opinion anyways.
 
Hun200kmh
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I don't think this deserves an entirely new one. My jaw dropped a bit by reading this piece about HRT, Yamamoto, Klien, Chandhok, Kolles ... so I decided to share:

http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/29809.html
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Not surprising at all, we all know Yamamoto was there because of money and we all suspected his "illness" was financial woes. Same with Chandhok's original demotion.
This is what happens with small teams struggling for budgets and its been going on since the very beginning of motorsport.

Virgin have also been dabbling with pay drivers, Lotus may do so too, as the article suggests. To be honest, I could have written that article without ever being near a Grand Prix in my life except for the quotes.

The stuff about a conspiracy with Senna vs. Klien is rubbish. Senna struggled all weekend at Singapore, I don't see why Hispania would go to the lengths of sabotaging Senna's car just to make Klien look good. But then again, Andrea Moda happened.
 
And *cough**cough* McLaren and Michael Andretti.

Bruno was suprisingly well off the pace all weekend though, in a car that's supposed to be identical. My thought was that the other HRT is better than Bruno's. I mean, it has actually finished a race recently, unlike Bruno's, which has been breaking down all year.

I think Bruno should go try and get a spot at Lotus. Karun can try and take Liuzzi's spot at Force India. Although if Yamamoto has given the team half a mil every race to go to the 2011 car, then HRT may be able to step out of the bottom and into the middle next year. Lotus has made good progress and are looking on to 2011, HRT is probably working on their 2011 car now as well, but what is Virgin up to?
 
McLaren didn't do anything to sabotage Andretti, he was simply naive and well out of his league.

Are you really asking what Virgin are doing? Maybe Wirth is designing their 2011 car in CFD? Ya know, like they did this year? Or is that too obvious? :rolleyes:
 
I mean, there aren't many news updates from them at all. Lotus always talks about their focus on 2011 and hoping to run with the big boys in a few years, HRT has its constant driver changes, and the chances that they may buy Toyota's old F1 facility(is that still floating around though).
 
Half a million dollars doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. You used to be able to establish a team for the same amount.
 
Ardius
Not surprising at all, we all know Yamamoto was there because of money and we all suspected his "illness" was financial woes. Same with Chandhok's original demotion.
This is what happens with small teams struggling for budgets and its been going on since the very beginning of motorsport.

Virgin have also been dabbling with pay drivers, Lotus may do so too, as the article suggests. To be honest, I could have written that article without ever being near a Grand Prix in my life except for the quotes.

The stuff about a conspiracy with Senna vs. Klien is rubbish. Senna struggled all weekend at Singapore, I don't see why Hispania would go to the lengths of sabotaging Senna's car just to make Klien look good. But then again, Andrea Moda happened.
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Oh my surprise wasn't about the concept of "paying drivers", I'm very much used to it and all of the recent portuguese F1 drivers - Matos Chaves, Lamy, Monteiro - were paying drivers (the "Senna way", meaning, through their own sponsors).

My surprise was more on how ruthless this has become in HRT (race-to-race basis), I don't think this "every GP weekend we'll see who pays for the seat and gets to do the race" policy has any precedent, at least not that I never knew or was aware of.

About the Senna business ... I don't know. One can only guess and speculate of course, but from all I have been reading it seems Senna played hard with Kolles after he was left out once, because he has a binding contract, signed before Kolles got the team and he doesn't need to pay any more money as long as his sponsors honour the deal. Maybe Kolles is having his petty revenge over it. Again, I'm only speculating, I dont think we'll never know for sure what's happening.

But I have to agree with the author of the quoted article. The gap was just TOO big to be explainable on driver skill alone (considering also that the gap between HRT and the other cars was kept in Kien's case, and grew immensely - from previous GPs - in Senna's case).
 
Ardius
McLaren didn't do anything to sabotage Andretti, he was simply naive and well out of his league.
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Then why did he podium at Monza, when he switched cars with Senna?


A bit of a question. Do the new teams, now, qualify within 107%?
 
Peter
Do the new teams, now, qualify within 107%?
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I believe Hispania is the only team to have qualified outside the 107% mark and they have only done it a few times. What I do know for certain is that even though the new teams have been likened to GP2 teams, Monaco was the only palce anyone was closer than a GP2 car.
 
Peter
Then why did he podium at Monza, when he switched cars with Senna?
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Convenient coincidence. I often wonder what people are smoking when they look to these consipracy theories - why would Ron want to screw Andretti over? Ok, he wanted Hakkinen in the seat later on when it became clear he wasn't the right driver, but its completely illogical for McLaren to give Andretti a poor car from the very start.
And if they were giving him a poor car, why would they then give him the better car just before booting him out?

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I believe Hispania is the only team to have qualified outside the 107% mark and they have only done it a few times. What I do know for certain is that even though the new teams have been likened to GP2 teams, Monaco was the only palce anyone was closer than a GP2 car.
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And even when the Hispania's do qualify outside of 107%, they would probably be allowed to race anyway, which was the reason it was rid of in the first place.
 
Ardius
Convenient coincidence. I often wonder what people are smoking when they look to these consipracy theories - why would Ron want to screw Andretti over? Ok, he wanted Hakkinen in the seat later on when it became clear he wasn't the right driver, but its completely illogical for McLaren to give Andretti a poor car from the very start.
And if they were giving him a poor car, why would they then give him the better car just before booting him out?
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I think something's up when a driver sucks all year, and when he switches cars with his senior, legendary teammate, whom the team favours already, he podiums, while the legendary teammate has a poor weekend, complaining about poor handling. It was Senna's choice I believe, to switch cars. The team supposedly sabotaged him so they could replace him for a cheaper option, Hakkinen.
 
Or simply that Andretti had finally gotten used to the cars and that Monza suited him as a track.
Andretti in this supposed better car qualified 9th to Senna's 4th. (Times were: Senna 1:22.633, Andretti 1:23.899)
Also, it might be podium, but it was at a race where there was a huge start crash and several top drivers retired through the race. Prost, Senna and Schumacher retired in the race.
There were only 10 finishers, Andretti beat the Sauber of Wendlinger and the Benetton of Patrese and then the rest were backmarkers. He started 9th and finished a whole lap down from Hill and Alesi.

Doesn't look so great now does it?
 
Michael Andretti was heavily distracted by his wife issues that season. His old man showed everybody the quick way 'round back in the day.
 
I lose...
 
Ardius
And even when the Hispania's do qualify outside of 107%, they would probably be allowed to race anyway, which was the reason it was rid of in the first place.
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And it was only really re-intorduced to appease Ferrari. Even if the new teams are significantly off the pace next year, no-one expects them to be over the 107% threshold.
 
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And it was only really re-intorduced to appease Ferrari. Even if the new teams are significantly off the pace next year, no-one expects them to be over the 107% threshold.
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So this rule will eventually suffer the same fate as the "rule" banning team orders? :lol:
 
Antti-san
So this rule will eventually suffer the same fate as the "rule" banning team orders? :lol:
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Ferrari were bitching about it after Canada; Alonso got held up by a Virgin across the back half of the circuit, which gave Jenson Button a run at him, and Button got through. Luca di Montezemolo was livid, going on a rant about how the new teams should never have been allowed in and there was that unprovoked "Horse Whisperer" blog post that was highly critical of the new teams. Honestly, I think Ferrari have bigger problems that need to be addressed, like Alonso's inability to lap someone running five and a half seconds slower than him. Anyway, the FIA agreed to reintorduce the 107% rule, despite the fact that every car would have qualified for almost every race this year. Hispania are the only ones who were outside that mark. It was largely implemented to shut Ferrari up. It's not a rule that's going to exist in principle but be ignored by and large, it's just a rule that isn't needed. Ferrari's petulant attitude is dictating a lot of the rule book, these days.
 
I think it may as well be there, there is no harm. New teams could come in future and potentially be dangerously slow. 107% is not hard to stay within, so if anyone falls outside of it, I think its fair to disqualify them. But, so far we haven't really had many drivers outside of it on genuine pace.
 
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