2003 Rookie Drivers

Just been visiting a few F1 sites around on the web, and found that Ralph Firman has been chosen as Fisichella's team mate at Jordan.

This brings me to an interesting point :
How well are the rookie's going to cope with the new qualifying rules (1 flying lap only)?
Only one of the new drivers bring some sort of credibility to the f1 "table" :

Cris da Matta - CART champ
Antonio Pizzonia - ?
Justin Wilson - ?
Ralph Firman - ?????

I can understand that the FIA want to get new young fresh drivers into F1 to counterbalance the older, more experienced drivers, but I'm thinking this new qualifying process is not going to go well. It will be putting the new drivers to the limit, they're going to make mistakes, the cars are faster than ever, I reckon there's going to be spills and thrills and chills in Melbourne. Hope the FIA know what they're doing!!

Who do you reckon will have a baptism of fire in 2003? Meaning, who will be involved in some of the serious accident and incidents that will probably occur?
ie.
2002 - Takuma Sato - serious accidents in Austria and Monaco
2001 - Luciano Burti - spectacular incident in Germany, serious accident at Belgium
2000 - Pedro de la Rosa - lucky to escape with his life at Monza
1999 - Jacques Villeneuve - lucky to walk away from his crash at Spa



The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes.

Ralph Firman is going to have a serous advantage over the other rookies - that advantage being Friday testing. He'll know the tracks extremely well and be familiar with how the car is coping with the conditions by the time qualifying comes round. Pizzonia and Wilson should not have much problem either, having raced at most of the tracks already.

The big loser - da Matta. The first time he'll run on the vast majority of tracks will be in Friday qualifying. No Friday testing means that he might struggle quite a lot if the car is not quick.

Race-wise, it's impossible to tell at this stage, although having seen Pizzonia in F3, he is awesome at cutting through traffic and making his way up from the back. However, so was Sato - and he showed that F1 can be a completely different story.




HISTORIC BTCC VIDEOS

you forgot about Zontas huge crash at spa the same time as villeneuve.

and massa's 100mph crash at st devote into the tyre barriers was pretty spectatcular.

You alos forgot bout Zonta hurting his leg in practice for Brazil, forcing him out for a few races whilst Salo stepped in




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps