F1 2011

Paul di Resta will join Adrian Sutil in Force India's second car, with Nico Hulkenberg serving as the team's third driver, according to reports.

With the team yet to confirm their driver line-up, speculation is rife regarding the identity of their drivers, with Blick newspaper now reporting that Paul di Resta will join Adrian Sutil in a race-seat, with former Williams man Nico Hulkenberg signed as reserve driver.

If the reports are correct, it will see Di Resta promoted from the position of third driver, with Tonio Liuzzi the man getting the sack.

Hulkenberg will take part in Friday morning testing sessions. However, Hulkenberg's manager, Willi Weber, reveals that Force India was not always set to be the German's new home.

"I actually wanted Nico to be the third driver at McLaren," Weber explained to the newspaper.

"But team boss Martin Whitmarsh feared that it would be seen as a threat to Jenson Button and he didn't want to disrupt the team's harmony as they hunt for the 2011 Championship."

The publication added that Force India would make an official announcement in the coming days.

Who's had a good year in F1 and who's had a correspondingly bad one?

Good Year - Team Lotus
Tony Fernandes brought the Lotus marque back to F1 racing and he and Mike Gascoyne did a fantastic job in his first season. The new teams were led to believe that the resource restriction Max Mosley had promised would be more comprehensive than it turned out. Thus when they got to F1 they were at more of a disadvantage than they thought they were going to be. Even with the big teams overspending they got within 107% of the pole for most of the races and were easily top team of the newbies. The ongoing spat between the Proton car company who bought the sportscar manufacturer Lotus does little credit to Proton.

Bad Year - Group Lotus
Apparently Danny Bahar, head of Group Lotus, wants to see the team achieve success quicker than Mike Gascoyne's outfit are likely to achieve it. Bahar clearly has not watched F1 for very long. He won't have seen Toyota pumping over a billion dollars into their team and making limited progress over the years. He can't have seen Honda doing the same, only to withdraw six months before they had a Championship winning car. And those two manufacturers put in a serious amount of money.
And why is it so important what the Chapman family think about the various bids for the Lotus name? They gave up and quit F1 and sold the team and the name. It's not like the ongoing Ferrari dynasty. Colin Chapman was an innovator, not a sponsor of someone else's innovation.
What's more, the plan for the Group Lotus-sponsored Renault team to race in the black and gold of the John Player Special is nothing to do about Lotus and all to do with a cigarette packet. Presumably they've got a licence from the Imperial Tobacco company to use the scheme? Also, they'll need to make sure it doesn't look anything like the cigarette packet or they'll be guilty of promoting tobacco sales. Ferrari and Marlboro have had to tread very carefully in this area.

Good Year - Fernando Alonso
The sense of relief Fernando Alonso felt when he joined the Ferrari team was obvious. Fernando doesn't like to be anywhere that he knows he can't win and having served his time 'in the trenches' at Minardi, Renault seemed like a big step backward in 2008 and 2009. Especially Renault minus their two key figures Flavio Briatore and Pat Symmonds. Though there were a few wobbles at the start of 2010 - the Aussie GP (which was hardly his fault but other people have pointed the finger), the Chinese GP false start and the Monaco crash, he bounced back to become the hot favourite to win the 2010 Champion.

Bad Year - Felipe Massa
Great to see Felipe back on the grid again and his Bahrain form gave you the hope that it would be the pre-Hungaroring-accident Felipe who had returned. Not quite. Felipe's qualifying form had always been his major asset, that ability to pull a blinding lap at the very last second and vault his way onto the front row. It didn't happen in 2010 and the chance he had of a confidence-restoring victory in Germany was taken from him. What's mor, he subsequently found out that Fernando was only "faster - than - you" because his engine was turned up. Intra-team paranoia about engine settings isn't confined to Ferrari, it goes on with Lewis and Jenson and Mark and Sebastian, but it well and truly took the wind out of Felipe's sails.

Good Year - Renault
Considering the team were now Renault-Lite after the withdrawal of factory backing, Robert Kubica led them to a better team result than they had achieved the previous season. At times they looked like they were the fourth best team on the grid, a great credit to Eric Boullier and Bob Bell. Maybe Eric has proven that the only thing holding the team back was Flavio Briatore.

Bad Year - Mercedes
They knew it was going to be tough to repeat their World Championship double, but there was an absolute gulf between the top three teams and Mercedes in fourth place. The former Brawn team barely scored half the amount of points of Ferrari - 396 to 214. Even if Schumi had matched Nico Rosberg's haul of 142 points they would have been a long way short.

Good Year - Eddie Jordan
After a faltering start Eddie Jordan hit his stride with the kind of interaction with F1's top personnel that you get in no other sport. You cannot possibly imagine Gary Linekar going up to Sepp Blatter at Wembley and playfully wrestling with him - as Eddie did with Bernie. Or rushing into the changing room and dragging Alex Ferguson out in front of the cameras. It's like this in no other top sport and we should rejoice (but still take the Schumi).

Bad Year - Jonathan Legard
If various reports are to be believed then it will be Martin Brundle as lead commentator for the BBC in 2011. Things appeared pretty frosty in the commentary box in 2010, though it was Brundle who appeared to be having the major sulk and not JL.

Good Year - Heikki Kovalainen
Heikki proved that he was the best of the rest in 2010, the king of the newbies. He was promoted to Official F1 Fire Marshal following his prompt action with a fire extinguisher in Singapore after his Lotus got a bit toasty. He also gave a lot of his salary away to charity. And last but not least he helped provide the enduring moment of the 2010 season by acting as the launchpad for Webbo Knievel's Valenica leap that made news headlines around the world.

Bad Year - Kimi Raikkonen
Kimi may be the best-performing F1 driver in the history of the World Rally Championship, but that's not saying much. One stage win, one fifth place, no podiums, lots of highly publicised crashes was the sum total of Kimi's 2010 campaign. Worst of all, he wasn't really missed in F1 and the tentative overtures his manager made about a return to F1 got mired in controversy. It would be good to have Raikkonen back. Anyone who's prepared to dress up in a gorilla suit for a power boat race has got to be worth having on the grid.

Good Year - Jenson Button
Jenson proved many things in 2010 - that he could compete with Lewis Hamilton, that his move away from Brawn wasn't such a bad thing, but most emphatically, that having a police driver was a wise move. Especially in Brazil.

Bad Year - Bernie Ecclestone
After Bernie was convinced that anyone who got mugged in Brazil was asking for it: "They look for victims, they look for anyone that looks like a soft touch and not too bright." Bernie himself got mugged in Princes Gate, London while returning to his flat with his new flame Fabiani Flosi - one of the marketing executives for - coincidentally - the Brazilian GP.
Without realising it at the time, I walked past the exact location a couple of weeks later, at around 10.45pm on a Friday night and there was no-one around on the street. Four blokes waiting in a car must have been very conspicuous in an area that has one of the greatest concentration of security cameras in London. Presumably there'll be charges soon...

Andrew Davies

the_hound wrote:Would LOVE Williams to become great again, but just like Charlton getting back to the EPL or England winning the World Cup, I've resigned myself to being a guy who loves supporting lost causes.

eggy wrote:
I'm gonna be boring and say I hope Hamilton wins the drivers championship and Mclaren wins the drivers championship (I suppose thats the same as someone who says they love Oasis, yet their favourite songs are Wonderwall and Don't Look back In Anger)