Williams confirmes Nakajima

Williams confirmed on October 9th that test and reserve driver Kazuki Nakajima will race in the last Grand Prix of the season in Brazil after Alex Wurz announced his immediate retirement. Nakajima has been behind the wheel of the Williams five times during Friday practice sessions in 2007 while also competing in the GP2 series, in which he was rookie of the year.








"I am very grateful to the team who have given me this opportunity," said the 22 year-old Japanese. "I hope I now know the car very well and thankfully have done some Friday driving as recently as Shanghai. This is a chance I intend to grab with both hands and repay the faith the team are showing in me with a strong performance."

Last Friday morning in China Nakajima put his Williams in the top 10 in practice, ninth overall and half a second behind team race driver Nico Rosberg. That same day Frank Williams said in the FIA press conference that Nakajima was Formula One material, although he hedged his bets about the youngster's long-term prospects.

The team stressed in today's announcement that Nakajima's promotion for Interlagos was not intended as an evaluation for a race seat in 2008, only to give him some experience. "You cannot assess a driver's capability on the basis of one race but this is an ideal opportunity to develop Kazuki's experience," said Williams. "I am confident he will approach the race in a very workmanlike and focused way."

Williams' race line up for 2008 seems, as do a few others, to depend on the future of Fernando Alonso. Given the current frosty relations between the Spaniard and McLaren it would be a surprise if he stayed with the Woking squad next year. Speculation is rife about what may develop not only at McLaren but also elsewhere if Alonso leaves.

Ferrari has underlined its commitment to Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa but Alonso's (possible) departure from McLaren would no doubt affect other teams. Renault has been stalling on naming its racers for next year and while Williams has asserted its rights to Rosberg, the German's name has cropped up in relation to McLaren.

Toyota also has a vacant race seat for 2008 so there's still a fair amount of scope for shuffling around. It's the usual fun and games but it doesn't seem likely that there will be any more announcements until the final race is over. Drivers recently linked with Williams include Toro Rosso's Tonio Liuzzi and BMW Sauber tester/GP2 champion Timo Glock.





Interesting thing is that williams rejected services of kazuki late father Satoru 20yrs ago. So he drove for Lotus. It is beleived that not signing Satoru costed Williams to loose Honda engines.






Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2007 02:11PM by brnco.

(check your img tags and url)

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

@muks: i'm still working on it, it's still beta version, satoru is coming up shortly

ok no problem. you should use the "preview" function to check your posts before you actually post then, so you can see what it looks like so far, and make any changes that need making.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

when was the last time we had three japanese drivers starting F1 race?

brnco Wrote:
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> Interesting thing is that williams rejected
> services of kazuki late father Satoru 20yrs ago.

he's not dead, is he?!

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

"Interesting thing is that williams rejected services of kazuki late father Satoru 20yrs ago. So he drove for Lotus. It is beleived that not signing Satoru costed Williams to loose Honda engines"

Satoru's not dead!

No he's alive. I think. maybie he died, dunno. I'll have to check.

quite an important thing to check before posting "late" about someone, lol

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

Well "late" fitted better in the sentence than "retired"

i'd disagree with that, because he is retired, he isn't dead.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

He is Kazuki's dead, and he is retired F1 driver. So both statements are correct.

he's Kazuki's dad, not dead.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

After an unscheduled stop at wiki (waste my time brnco grrr), Satoru is not dead, and is Kazukis father. And has a racing game named after him.

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Let's just hope (for Frank and Patrick’s sake) that he is not as crash happy as his dead [sic]

(Apologies, lol)

I remember people talking about Satoru, saying he was the best Japanese driver till say, Ukyo Kamikaze [sic], came along. That doesn't say much for the Japanese driving standards pre-1990's does it (for anybody who actually remembers Satoru Crash-a-jima)

What’s the General consensus on the new boy, as I haven't really formulated an opinion of him yet?

Hasn't he been a bit crash happy in GP2, or am I thinking of one of the other rookies...?



RedSam
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lol dead is a lot different to dad.

and a beta forum post? wtf lol

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a general question but what is with being japanese and crashing ?

sato, ide, inoue ??

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

I think he's pretty decent. He has had a share of good GP2 races.

It was Yamamoto himself who was creating madness all over the place quite a couple of times in GP2 this year.