Valtteri Bottas ended the first day of the F1 Young Driver test at Silverstone fastest in his Williams. This was no great surprise. The test was disrupted late in the day by rain, but Bottas was not going for quick times, but rather doing race simulations, which meant that by the end of the day he had completed an impressive 120 laps. His best lap was a 1m31.436s, which was set in the morning.
The others who were out were Marussia duo Max Chilton and Rio Haryanto. The pair compete in GP2 Series for the Marussia Carlin team and the young driver test is believed to be part of the package that was offered to them before the year began. Chilton ended up the faster of the two, but both were more than five seconds slower than Bottas’s best. Haryanto also did fewer laps.
Down at HRT there was a little history in the making as Chinese driver Ma Qing Hua had his first runs in an F1 car, becoming the first Chinese driver to drive a Formula 1 car at an official event. The Shanghai-born driver did 54 laps. and was 6.3 seconds slower than Bottas.
Ah, got it now.
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Valtteri Bottas ended the first day of the F1 Young Driver test at Silverstone fastest in his Williams. This was no great surprise. The test was disrupted late in the day by rain, but Bottas was not going for quick times, but rather doing race simulations, which meant that by the end of the day he had completed an impressive 120 laps. His best lap was a 1m31.436s, which was set in the morning.
The others who were out were Marussia duo Max Chilton and Rio Haryanto. The pair compete in the GP2 Series for the Marussia Carlin team and the young driver test is believed to be part of the package that was offered to them before the year began. Chilton ended up the faster of the two, but both were more than five seconds slower than Bottas’s best. Haryanto also did fewer laps.
Down at HRT there was a little history in the making as Chinese driver Ma Qing Hua had his first runs in an F1 car, becoming the first Chinese driver to drive a Formula 1 car at an official event. The Shanghai-born driver did 54 laps. and was 6.3 seconds slower than Bottas.
Yes it was Joe’s thread header, we all read it at the top of the page, why paste it all beck here again?
Because when I first read it, it was jumbled up. I was wondering if my decoding was correct.
Whatever happened to Ho Pin Tung? Much promise in the Chinese market but then went quiet.
What? That famous Chines driver? The one who was born and bred in the Netherlands…..
True that Tung was a Dutch national, and born there, but he raced for China in A1. On his website, he calls himself a “Chinese” racing driver. I believe both his citizenship and superlicense are now Chinese. I think in fairness to him, he broke ground long before Ma Qing Hua. So did Teddy Yip, another Chinese, who was not born in China, and had a Dutch passport, but is viewed as Chinese.
Too little, too late, I think. He did show some promise and became quite popular in China, but either his talent or the funding were too low.
Nice Guy though, never met him, but he’s from the village I live in, so I always hoped he would make it.
He’s “Chinese” but he was born in the Netherlands. Ma Qing is the first Chinese born driver to get an F1 test.
Joe you got any idea how they’re footing the bill or is rent Silverstone for 2 days irrelevant compared to the cost of running?
They are running, so someone is paying. I guess the three teams are sharing the cost. That is logical. I think the numbers are probably irrelevant in the overall scheme if things.
He’s racing in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia
I am hope Bottas will replace Maldonado as soon as possible. Williams desrves better.
The problem they have with Maldonado is that he’s fast.
You are talking about the guy who is a GP2 champion, won a race for Williams (first in ages) and could have scored a lot more without his race incidents? If you look at the two Williams drivers, I’m not really sure Pastor is one who should leave soon…
Yar, without his racing incidents.
Also, Webber could be the 2010 World Champion if he hadn’t crashed in Korea. Massa the 2008 champion if Ferrari had remember to unplug the fuel hose in Singapore. Hamilton the champion in 2007 had he not beached his car in China. Raikkonen in 2003 etc………………………..
Those guys all made 1 mistake or the team made one mistake and it’s bitten them I can’t see why making as many ‘racing incidents’ as Maldo can be ignored. One or two as a rookie okay… three in half a season… and in his 2nd season………….
They got rid of Hulkenberg for less.
I doubt he will go though.
Also of note, take away his one win and suddenly Senna is thrashing him in points. 4 and half times! (4 madlo vs 18 Senna)!!!!
And yes I realise you can’t ignore the win but it’s an interesting statistic.
They didn’t get rid of Hulkenberg for his performance on track (just see at his pole position in wet Brazil)…
Strong rumour is he will be driving by the end of the season…. but not replacing Pastor.
You can make a quick, reckless driver win races. Slow safe drivers never do.
Absolutely. It’s not as if Maldonado has ever won a race for Williams…er…oh.
Bottas will not be replacing Maldonado any time soon. In a sense, I do feel for Bruno – he is, after all, scoring points on a semi-regular basis; it just so happens to be 7ths, 8ths and 9ths, etc… as opposed to big scores.
But what of Pastor? Yes he won in Spain, but his only only score was a decent 8th in China. For him to be ever considered a top level driver, he needs a far better point scoring record than that.
As for now, Bruno is 11 points behind Pastor, despite the latter’s victory in Spain. Another performance like Malaysia from Bruno and suddenly he’s level or even ahead of Maldonado.
One must ask, is Bruno being unfairly criticised at this point? Equally, how much better would Williams be doing better if they simply had a better pair of drivers..?
“One must ask, is Bruno being unfairly criticised at this point?”
If you ask me, no. If you look back on the past year, he’s made a whole lot of costly errors – drive-through penalties at Spa and Brazil, sliding off in qualifying, first-lap altercations, and he hasn’t made it to Q3 this year – and to make matters worse, his worst qualifying performances always seem to come when Maldonado sets a good time. His mistakes might not be as prominent as Maldonado’s, but if you ask me, Senna never should have gotten a drive this year.
Look at it this way for a second…
Maldo 25 + 4
Senna 18
That is a win + 4 points VS 18 points.
Sure Maldo has gone off a lot in the first half of the year but Senna is scoring way more than Maldo if you take out 1 weekend.
Will that weekend happen again? Doubt it this year. So who will score more points, which is what the team is after for the WCC, by the end of the year, my money is on Senna. Not very confident but pretty confidence.
I think your view is missing what Senna has done. Nothing great, but it’s far more than Maldo in almost every race and that, scoring more points is what really matters.
If one has destroyed the other or storngly beaten then get rid of the weakling, however I think it’ll be close and your call that Senna shoudn’t have gotten a drive is rather too far at least in hindsight.
He’s crashed several times when being on course for big scores though, including in Melbourne and in Valencia.
You can teach a quick guy to stop crashing, but you can’t teach a slow guy to drive faster.
“You can teach a quick guy to stop crashing, but you can’t teach a slow guy to drive faster.”
Only some of the time. Sato is an example of a fast driver who never learned to not crash – I don’t believe Maldonado will ever learn.
You’re being charitable if you’re calling Takuma Sato a fast driver. Fast compared to Taki Inoue maybe…
I do think Maldonado comes into the category of “fast without actually knowing why”, but I honestly think that Perez’s outburst was more a case of the Sauber driver trying to deflect attention from his own idiocy.
Sato is incredibly fast. Always has been. And is respected for being quick; he is just erratic.
I agree. Maldo doesn’t crash, he does stupid things.
Crashing comes from biting off more than can be chewed or going for something that isn’t there. Experience helps that.
But driving into people, having swipes at Perez and Hamilton and not really caring where others cars are are just stupid decisions.
I think it’s a pity the young driver tests were not open to the public. The old summer tyre tests always were; I had assumed this test would be until I phoned Silverstone to ask.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see Ma in the car later this year, probably in free practice – and maybe even a race seat in future. I think Chinese investment in the sport is inevitable, and it would probably be more appealing to them if there was a Chinese driver racing. Luis Perez-Sala said a few months ago that the team would be willing to change their name in the future; HRT is a hangover from Cabarante’s involvement, so it’s not really representative of the team as it is now. So I could see HRT being reimagined as a “Chinese” team in 2013.
As for the choice of Ma as driver … it’s a difficult call. When he was announced as being part of HRT’s driver programme at the Chinese Grand Prix, everyone (probably rightly) assumed it was just the team courting sponsors. But he was only four-tenths of a second off Rio Haryanto’s time, which wasn’t bad given that he had never driven a Formula 1 car before and had never done a lap of Silverstone. Yes, Haryanto had less running time, but he drove for Virgin in 2010 and raced at Silverstone last weekend, so all things considered, I think Ma did quite well for himself and maybe warrants a bit more consideration.
And speaking of Haryanto, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him racing in Formula 1 some time in the future. Maybe not in 2013, but I could see him in the sport in 2014.
Beck? Watching “Bush pilots” and a sef efricen excint mist ef crept ofa mi.