Sauber sign Perez and land Telemex

Didn't expect Perez and Telemex to sign anything and announce until after the season but meh.... shame for Heidfeld who will now have to look elsewhere for next year... perhaps he ought to target Renault and Force India.

I think the plan was for Nick Heidfeld to get racing experience to go with his Pirelli tyre work - so that he could attract higher teams (Renault etc.).


Good to see another youngster get their chance at the top level of motorsport.

And great to hear that Sauber have sponsorship for a bloody change!

Ah, excellent. Sauber look good for next season.

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GPGSL: S6 - TafuroGP Tester (14th) /// S7 - ART Tester (6th) /// S8 - Demon Driver (13th) /// S9 - Demon/Snake Driver (13th) /// S10 - Snake Driver (???) ///]
"My ambition is handicapped by laziness" - Charles Bukowski

It certainly makes Sauber's decision to sack Pedro questionable.

If they didn't plan to keep Heidfeld for 2011, surely it would be better to keep Pedro who knew the car and could help develop it more than Heidfeld could...


Anyway, good to see Sauber's long term future secured. Just like 2001 and times before that, they have some bright new talent, and I look forward to seeing how they go.

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X (@ed24f1)

I watched Perez in gp2 and lower formulae. I think he's ok but nothing too special. Will be interesting to see how he performs. I didnt think highly of Petrov mind, though he has some good performances time to time.

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SchueyFan
Just like 2001 and times before that, they have some bright new talent, and I look forward to seeing how they go.

I'm not sure what percentage is talent and what percentage is money.

I think in terms of performance (both in speed and in development), Heidfeld would be the far better guy for the job... perhaps not for the long-term, but he's still got a good few seasons left in him yet.

Still, Perez doesn't exactly seem like your average pay-driver, and having not seen him to any great degree I won't categorically label him as such, but he did finish a very distant 2nd in GP2 to one of the most underwhelming (if entertaining) champions for years... GP2 didn't exactly seem brimming with talent this year.

Then again, Petrov was never seen as a wonder-talent and he's not exactly been woeful this season (though I'm still unimpressed by him overall) and Diniz, who was the very definition of a pay driver, was an extremely decent driver when he got his mitts on a decent car, so hopefully it's just (the rather dubious) Carlos Slim backing a future star.


As for de la Rosa I don't think he was an exceptional test driver as much as someone with comparatively little ambition, so was happy to be a test driver for most of a decade without needing the buzz of actually going racing. Let's face it, the guy wasn't placed in the seat for his speed, and that they shoved him out in order to field Heidfeld for the final few races without committing to 2011 says a great deal about his impact at Sauber overall - they clearly didn't value his feedback as much as we were expecting when he was signed. As most know, I'm not Heidfeld's biggest fan (I like the bloke, but don't rate him as anything other than a solid midfield runner), but he's about 8,000,000 times better than Pedro.

Well I think development could be a big issue for Sauber next year. They will just have to hope they have got some head start from Heidfeld as to how the cars will react to the Pirelli tyres. Otherwise, it could be a struggle for them.

But even so, it would be very hard for Peter Sauber not to take the money from Slim and boost the team's future.

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X (@ed24f1)

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> As for de la Rosa I don't think he was an
> exceptional test driver as much as someone with
> comparatively little ambition, so was happy to be
> a test driver for most of a decade without needing
> the buzz of actually going racing. Let's face it,
> the guy wasn't placed in the seat for his speed,
> and that they shoved him out in order to field
> Heidfeld for the final few races without
> committing to 2011 says a great deal about his
> impact at Sauber overall - they clearly didn't
> value his feedback as much as we were expecting
> when he was signed. As most know, I'm not
> Heidfeld's biggest fan (I like the bloke, but
> don't rate him as anything other than a solid
> midfield runner), but he's about 8,000,000 times
> better than Pedro.


Well, in McLaren he was well considered...
And Heidfeld is not 8E6 times better than Pedro. I think Pedro career would be similar to the Nick's one if he has had the same opportunities (and luck). In terms of spped, he was faster than Verstappen in Arrows, quite tied to Irvine at Jaguar and quite similar to Koba in Sauber. Simply that for whatever reason, his car always fail at the worst moment and that he can't bring any money at all... In the grid there are quite a few drivers much worse than De La Rosa...
Thibnk about MSchumacher impact this year and De la Rosa's one. In terms of adaptation, Pedro has done it much better and both were out from 2006. And we'll see what's Heidfeld capable of doing the remaining 4 races.

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Ali
In terms of spped, he was faster than Verstappen in Arrows

While I was a fan of the Arrows team back then, the only guys slower than Verstappen were pay drivers. As much as I liked him and thought him under-rated generally, he really wasn't all that good.

Sorry, but Pedro may have been decent, but he suffers everything that Heidfeld does - a lack of balls, but he's slower than Heidfeld too.

Pedro may have been well regarded at McLaren, but clearly Sauber weren't very impressed with his skills, or they'd have kept him over Heidfeld and/or Kobayashi or Perez.

Yes, you couldn't call Pedro an exciting driver usually, but then there was Bahrain 2005 when he was all over the place

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X (@ed24f1)

gav Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Let's face it,
> the guy wasn't placed in the seat for his speed,
> and that they shoved him out in order to field
> Heidfeld for the final few races without
> committing to 2011 says a great deal about his
> impact at Sauber overall - they clearly didn't
> value his feedback as much as we were expecting
> when he was signed.

I have it from very reliable sources, that Sauber almost as a rule, particularly under Willy Rampf, does not value driver development input. Peter Sauber, likeable as he is, is a part of this problematic attitude. They seemed to agree, that problems pointed out with the handling of the car, are due to the driver not having the proper understanding of how to drive the car. Trust in design comes over trust in driver feedback. This even happened when they hired test drivers to analyse a specific handling issue with the car!

Think about it. If you get feedback from the drivers, that a specific feature of car handling is not optimal, and you hire a independent tester to investigate that one issue in a test session, and he confirms the feedback from the drivers, and you still conclude the drivers are not using the machinery correctly, then you have a serious problem in the overall development potential of the team. When that problem is to be found at the highest level of leadership, then there is only so much everyone else can do to push the team in the right direction.

This would certainly explain why de la Rosa went out, why Heidfeld was only signed for this season, why Kubica is getting proper results with Renault, Kubica has stopped being so damn grumpy all the time, and Renault are moving forward in that partnership, while Sauber did not. It could even explain why Sauber seem unable to break out of the midfield, no matter what they do.

Whether or not this will change with the appointment of James Key earlier this year remains to be seen.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

That's very interesting stuff Morbid. Could even explain why BMW did a good 2008 season and then plummeted the next year.