Ferrari reserve driver Jules Bianchi has will be Force India’s reserve driver for 2012. The 22-year-old Frenchman will take part in around half of the Friday practice sessions and some pre-season tests as well.
“The chance to get track time during race weekends is an important step for me,” he said. “Being regularly in a current car is the best way to learn quickly and I hope it will put me in a strong position to one day move into a race seat. The next few months will be really exciting as I get to know the team, see how they work, and prepare for my time in the car.”
Bianchi will remain a member of the part Ferrari Driver Academy, along with Sergio Perez, Raffaele Marciello, Brandon Maisano and Lance Stroll. Davide Rigon has also recently extended his relationship with the team for all racing and promotional activities in 2012 and 2013.
Ferrari has no shortage of drivers if another is needed.
No shortage of the number of drivers indeed… though they might need pedal extensions if they call up little Lance!
Have they retired Fisichella and Badoer? I’ve forgotten if there were others
Badoer was retired after 2010, but Fisichella and Gene are still involved with Ferrari;
http://www.ferrari.com/English/Formula1/Scuderia/Drivers/Pages/Other_Drivers.aspx
Joe,
Given your earlier piece about potential money worries for Force India, do you think money will have passed to The team from the direction of Italy around the same time as this announcement?
Joe do you think he is bringing money for some Friday driving?
Maybe I am just being overly harsh, but his results so far have been distinctly average for someone with the backing of a major F1 team (and who drove for a GP2 team with an impressive record).
It’ll be very interesting to see how he does on Friday mornings. Obviously you cant judge anything over a single Friday practice session but over the season we should get an idea what sort of future he is likely to have.
Of course it is another sign of Force India’s financial situation being less than optimal.
Joe, what’s the word in the paddock on Bianchi ?
He arrived in GP2 with a big reputation but he’s not delivering, is he?
GP.
If finishing third two years running is not delivering. I think he’s fine.
Hello Joe,
Seems a bit strange that a Merc powered team would sign a driver with ties to Ferrari, especially since he will be retaining that connection.
That’s why I think he’s ties with Ferrari are now only symbolic and he’s no longer consider a prospect for the Scuderia race seat.
Not only is pressure on Massa in 2012, but Kobayashi will be under the pump with all the other drivers in the Ferrari program, not to mention Gutiérrez and maybe even Massa himself being offloaded to Sauber for 2013.
In Italy they refer to Bianchi as a Gran Fermo, you know what that means and his career results confirm that. If he’s the next big thing why are his results in GP2 so poor, he even got beaten by Luca Fillipi in 2011 who Ferrari wouldn’t give the time of day to.
He’s obvoiusly being groomed to race for Ferari in the near future and this must be great news for Ferrari’s rivals Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes
as he is average at best.
Let’s face it he’s only apparently good because he’s managed by Nicholas Todt, yes the son of you know who?. Job’s for the boy’s as the saying goes.
Bianchi is a very good young driver. If finishing third two years running in GP2 is bad, including missing races because of a fractured vertebra, then there are a few people who have no business being in F1 at the moment. He is young and not as well-heeled as Pic. He is not part of the Red Bull programme, as is Vergne, nor is he a favourite of Eric Boullier (Grosjean). The Force India makes sense if he does not have another way to get F1 experience. I would say it is a sign of good management that he is doing this.
As to your conspiracy theories about the Todt Family, I think you need to have a closer look at the way Ferrari operates. These days Todt Jr is just another grifter, selling his drivers to those who are looking. Obviously being the son of JT was an advantage earlier in his career, because doors were opened for him, but to stay in such a place you have to stand on your own two feet. He is doing that. He is a good talent-spotter. He also has contracts with guys that you have not heard about (yet).
Completely agree Joe. I really don’t see how two 3rd places in the championship can be written off. I’ve read several GP2 team bosses say that winning the championship nowadays is a 2-3 year project, unlike the early years of the series (which makes Romain Grojean’s effort even more impressive).
Esteban Gutierrez went from being GP3 champion in 2010 to 13th in GP2 last year, but I don’t see people questioning his grooming at Sauber.
Bianchi’s GP2 results may have been disappointing, but that doesn’t stop him from being a top driver. The fact that when he arrived in GP2 he was a title favourite and was expected to follow Hamilton and Hulkenberg by becoming rookie champions says it all. Just because he failed to acheive that, doesn’t turn him from possibly the most promising driver out there to completely useless in the space of two years. His record prior to GP2 was outstanding, and it was that that got Ferrari’s attention in the first place. If Ferrari simply took on whoever Todt Jr managed, regardless of potential, they’d have had Maldonado on their books.
Hey Joe, Italian media speculates that this move is making place for Kubica. Your opinion on that?
It is not going to happen.
Joe,
As we’re talking a bit about GP2 here, there’s a question that’s been niggling at me for a while : how “team-dependant” is performance in GP2? In a series with such driver flux it’s hard to get a handle on what the significance of a good GP2 record really is.
Looking at the list of GP2 champions since 2005 I get a sense of very variable driver ability – obviously only Hamilton has had a top drive in F1 to really prove his talent, but I don’t think many would put Timo Glock or Pastor Maldonado on his level. Hülkenberg and Rosberg perhaps fall somewhere in between.
Is it essentially possible to get lucky (or pay…) and get a great drive and hence notch some wins or are these guys really all top level performers and simply struggle sometimes with the step up to F1 or never quite reach “the next level”?
Sorry, bit long there.
It is easy to knock GP2 because it is wildly overpriced and exists mainly to generate profits for its owners. Given that it was sold as being a cheaper alternative to Formula 3000 this is disgraceful, particularly as it is the gateway to F1 and should be as cheap as possible to enable talent to shine over money. What is clear is that it is necessary to be in the right team at the right time, although that is true of many other championships as well. Be that as it may, the majority of the GP2 frontrunners are high quality drivers.
Casting my eyes over the GP2 results, Bianchi has notched 1 race win in 2 seasons, a record roughly equivalent to that of Kamui Kobayashi, in which time his team mates notched 2 – 1 each for Bird and Gutiérrez. In Bianchi’s defence, he did trounce both of them over the whole season.
Interestingly, Charles Pic has three race wins from the same period.
Top GP2 strike rate (wins:races) goes to Hülkenberg interestingly, just ahead of Hamilton, arguably thanks to a shorter season in 2009.
The current system of test drivers doesn’t seem sensible to me. They are not needed for testing, as there is so little testing to do, and in any case they are not experienced enough to be particularly good at it. If they are given a run on Fridays it is mainly for their own benefit – the team’s interests would be better served by giving the race drivers maximum track time. And finally if a race driver were to be indisposed, the test driver’s lack of recent racing and race-sharpness is bound to put him at a disadvantage as a stand-in.
The problem is that GP2 is supposed to be a conveyor belt delivering new stars to F1, but there are no spaces available. Also there is no evidence that recent GP2 stars are any better than the ones of a few years previous who are still waiting in a queue for a drive, or have only had a drive in a duff car.
It seems to me to be in the interests of safety in F1 and in the drivers’ own interests if you were only eligible to be a stand-in if you had a current race seat, preferably in GP2. In this model, somebody like Bianchi would continue in GP2 with Force India’s support, alongside any F1 testing required. This would mean that the reserve drivers would all be in GP2 and competing to stay at the head of the queue. That would make GP2 much more interesting, make it much clearer which of them are really the best, and end the current wastefulness of promising careers just petering out into inactivity.
Anthony – perhaps the answer is that even though a driver may win GP2, that might not be enough to get the seat at the F1 table if the team managers do not consider them good enough for the top level. They are probably waiting for the likes of a Seb to come along and then compete to sign them.