The Italian Dilemma

Luca Filippi c/o GP2 Media Service

Yesterday’s news that Michel Jourdain Jr would take the second Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing seat at the Indy 500 confirmed unfortunate rumours that Luca Filippi’s deal to be the team’s second driver for 2012 had hit financially rocky waters.

It’s an all too familiar story. Talented Italian lacks budget and doesn’t get the chances he deserves.

But why does it always seemingly affect Italians over any other nationality?

Let’s get one thing straight right away. I’m not arguing that the Italian nation has a God given right to see its drivers in top championships and at top teams. I’m not saying that Luca should be gifted a seat and some sponsorship simply because he’s Italian.

I’m saying that he merits it on talent, but seems to be denied it because of his nationality.

There’s a statistic that I constantly refer to in this argument, and its one that is, to my mind, fairly staggering. In the seven years of the GP2 Series, every driver who has finished either as Champion or Runner Up has progressed to a race seat in Formula One. There are, however, two exceptions to the rule. See if you can spot the odd ones out.

Champions:

2005 Nico Rosberg
2006 Lewis Hamilton
2007 Timo Glock
2008 Giorgio Pantano
2009 Nico Hulkenberg
2010 Pastor Maldonado
2011 Romain Grosjean

Runners Up

2005 Heikki Kovalainen
2006 Nelson Piquet Jr
2007 Lucas di Grassi
2008 Bruno Senna
2009 Vitaly Petrov
2010 Sergio Perez
2011 Luca Filippi

Spotted the anomalies on the list? Yep, one champion and one runner up failed to graduate into an F1 race seat. And they’re both Italian.

Pantano and Filippi c/o GP2 Media Service

“Ah yes,” comes the rebuttal. “But they’d both been racing for so many years in the championship, they were too old to be taken seriously. Surely if they’d been any good they would have been successful in their earlier years?”

There was something of an irony that at Monza in 2008, when Giorgio Pantano was wrapping up his GP2 title, over in Formula One Sebastian Vettel was dominating the weekend in his Toro Rosso, en route to becoming the youngest pole sitter and race winner in F1 history. Giorgio, was 29. Too old for a second chance? Apparently so.

But not every driver is Sebastian Vettel. Not every driver is a Kimi Raikkonen, who can jump into an F1 car after less than two dozen single seater races in his life and be competitive. It takes every driver a unique amount of time to mature, to find his feet. You cannot rush it. Drivers are ready when they are ready.

It’s why I felt so sorry for Jaime Alguersuari at the start of the year. To be dumped by Red Bull and to be told you don’t have what it takes to be a champion… when you’re 21? Not only is that harsh, it’s incredibly unfair. And to my mind it is also untrue. Did he and does he have potential? Absolutely. Just because he’s not yet won a race, just because he’s not on the same curve as a Vettel, doesn’t mean he won’t become as good as the two-time champion.

Jenson Button is a prime example of a driver who came in early and, if he’d arrived in this modern era, might have lasted for a season or two. He was in his seventh season of Formula 1 when he won his first race. He was in his tenth season when he won his first championship. I’d say that last year, in his 12th F1 season, Jenson Button was driving better than he ever had in his life. He was a more complete racer, and a more complete man.

Experience and maturity are words which are usually seen as being strong factors in the make-up of an individual’s character, not deficits. So why should it matter that it takes a driver a few years to win a feeder championship? If a feeder category exists to prepare a driver for Formula 1, is it not better that he spends as much time as he needs to in that category until he has amassed the experience required to find the maturity to win a championship?

Giorgio Pantano. At 29, too old for an F1 return. c/o GP2 Media Service

When you think about it, who would the stronger theoretical racer be? The 19 year old kid who jumped straight out of karts into Formula Renault, did a year in GP3, a year in GP2 and arrived in F1 with 60 single seater race starts to his name, or a driver in his mid to late 20s, with 100s of races behind him? All of that experience, all of that accrued knowhow. How to set up a car, how to race in any and all conditions, how to race with a younger team-mate, how to race with an equal team-mate, how to race with a better team-mate, how to fight adversity, how to manage a race, how to overcome the odds. And more than that, a driver who has been racing long enough that he has made his mistakes, and learned from them.

Why do we see such a high turnover of young drivers in F1 and a reluctance from the bigger teams to give youth a shot? Because they are rushed in and have to make their mistakes on the biggest stage going. The junior formulas are where mistakes should be made. Where lessons should be learned. If it takes a few more years for those lessons to sink in, what’s the big deal?

The fact that Filippi and Pantano are linked by their longevity in GP2 and the failure of Formula 1 to recognise their talents, and that they are linked by a common nationality, has made me ask whether it is simply an Italian trait… and I think perhaps it could be. That Latin temperament, that natural ability which looks so rough around the edges in the early years because of that fire which burns within them. Perhaps it just takes Italians a little while longer to iron out those passionate creases?

As examples, look no further than Jarno Trulli and Giancarlo Fisichella, Italy’s Formula 1 poster boys for the past decade. Jarno sits third in the all time list of races completed before taking a first Formula 1 victory on 119. Giancarlo is 6th on 110. The F1 driver with the most races and no wins to his name is Andrea de Cesaris… an Italian.

Ferrari, that great bastion of Italian passion, seems to steer clear of giving Italians a proper shot, too. OK it gave a run out to Luca Badoer when Felipe Massa was injured back in 2009 but we all remember how well that turned out. Even poor old Fisichella never got a proper crack of the whip. There are rumours that Jarno Trulli might even get a call up if Massa doesn’t pull his finger out this season. “Ahhh yes”, comes the argument, “but Ferrari has its junior driver academy. Salvation!” Or not, because its two leading lights are a Mexican (Sergio Perez) and a Frenchman (Jules Bianchi.)

Luca Filippi c/o GP2 Media Service

The reason that all of this has been weighing on my mind this week, is due to two things. First, there’s the on going situation with Luca Filippi and Giorgio Pantano in America. Indycar wants them to race, there are seats available, but they are both struggling to find budget. Pantano is a driver whom Fernando Alonso once described as “Invincible.” I’ve always rated him highly. Chip Ganassi feels the same way.

And as for Filippi? Take a look at the opening four races of the F1 season and think about how fabulously Romain Grosjean has done, how warmly he has been embraced and how impressive he has looked. Now think about this… Luca Filippi outscored him in the second half of last year’s GP2 series. Then take a look at how the respective teams those drivers raced for last year are faring in GP2 this year… Grosjean’s Dams team have amassed two poles, two wins and two podiums in four races. Filippi’s Coloni team has one 5th place finish and one 8th place to its name. Filippi’s performance last season should thus now start to come into focus.

How is it that these boys can struggle to find backing?

But what sparked my thought process was in the very performance of Dams that I have just touched on in GP2. Because last weekend in Bahrain, Davide Valsecchi completely annihilated the field. Pole position, fastest lap, Feature race winner, Sprint race winner… it was an incredible performance. He leads the championship. And it may be early days, but what if he wins it?

He is an Italian. In his fifth year of GP2.

Will he, as Pantano and Filippi before him, be passed over by the Formula 1 paddock? Will he, as Pantano and Filippi, be forced to search for scraps of funding to race in America?

Formula 1’s pompous and arrogant denial of the talents of Pantano and Filippi, should be America’s gain. It should be Indycar’s opportunity to show Formula 1 what it is missing.

I hope Valsecchi’s fate allows him to forge a different path to his Italian forerunners in GP2.

But I fear Formula 1 is far too preoccupied with appearance over ability.

Davide Valsecchi c/o GP2 Media Service

Bahrain… safety and morality.

I was sent a tweet yesterday, which made an insinuation that because I was employed to work in Formula 1, I was being paid to not “understand” the political and moral questions over the hosting of this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix.

I took some umbrage to this, not least because until this week I believe I was the only F1 journalist to have set foot in Bahrain since the 2010 Formula 1 Grand Prix, but more so because I have a degree in Political Science. I believe I have precisely the correct background not only to understand the very complex issues at stake in the Gulf State, but also to comment on them. As a student of both law and politics in my lifetime, I could and some might argue that I should be writing and broadcasting about the morality of holding a race this weekend in Bahrain.

But here’s the thing. I’m not a political journalist. Nor am I a war correspondent. I travel to do my job armed not with a flak jacket and a helmet, but with a microphone and a book of Formula 1 statistics.

The journalist in me, and the student of politics in me, wants to go to Bahrain to report on both sides of the political argument, to hear from the government and from the protesters. My colleagues Ian Parkes, Byron Young and Kevin Eason are doing just that this week. And they all do so not with backgrounds in politics, but as sports journo lifers. And in some ways, I feel it to be a shame that they have been placed in that position by their employers, and to a certain extent by the sport itself. Because they have had to put themselves in harms way, when they didn’t sign up for that. They signed up to report on motor racing… not riots, not protests, not civil unrest, tear gas and molotov cocktails.

The question over whether to hold the race or not, from an external perspective at least, is all about politics and money. By racing we are seen as endorsing a regime with ethical infractions, which are coming under heavy questioning from the international community, in return for a large wedge of cash. Some in the sport have taken a moral decision not to attend this week’s race. But, at the same time, such morally guided decisions did not seem to affect their thought process on whether to attend the Chinese Grand Prix. But if an individual is so guided by a moral stand on political freedoms for one Nation State, then why not for another?

I was given the opportunity by SPEED, my employers, not to attend the Bahrain Grand Prix. But I have decided that I will. I have made that much clear both in this blog and on twitter.

My reasoning right now is simple. Formula 1 has said that it does not wish to become embroiled in the politics of any country in which it races. This is a perfectly fine stance to take at base level – sport and politics are uneasy bed fellows. As such, the only consideration for the sport over the hosting of the race was whether or not Bahrain itself is a safe enough place to visit and to race. The information provided to the FIA is that yes, it is safe. That’s why we’re having the race. And that’s why I’m going.

My opinions on Bahrain, on its regime, on the rights and wrongs of the actions of the protest movement or those of the police, have no place in my reporting of the sport.

Would you have expected me in China to write and broadcast about the ongoing situation in Tibet, or the severe restrictions placed over China’s own journalists, artists and free thinkers in a country still oppressed by the strictures of a post-Communist, Marxist/Leninist government?

Some of you will think that I am being blinkered. That I am closing my eyes to the realities of a country I am visiting to report on a motor race, and thus one which will benefit from the positive publicity generated by such an event. And I see your point. I really do.

But I am not blinkered. I am not blind to people’s basic human desire and right to have their voices heard and to be blessed with the same democratic freedoms which we hold dear and so often take for granted.

However my job is to report on racing. How I feel about where we race should not come into it. The only thing that will stop me going, as indeed the only thing which will stop the sport from racing, is the question of personal safety. Because I love my sport and I love my job, but I love my daughter more. Is that selfish? Possibly. But it is a position we have been forced into by the sport deciding that it is safe to race.

Perhaps Formula 1 has taken its destiny out of its own hands by aiming to stay out of the politics of Bahrain. If the safety of which it has assured us does not come to pass, then the sport and its decision makers will suffer the consequences. And it will hit the sport where it will hurt the most… its pockets.

As for me, as I have said before, all I can do is trust the FIA that the region is safe enough for us to visit. And from the messages coming from colleagues already out in Bahrain, it would seem that, thus far, it is.

I will not go searching for trouble. I will not, as colleagues braver than I have done, go searching for riots and protesters. But know that if they come looking for us, if the smell of gasoline or tear gas invades the sporting arena in which my interest lies, and if for one moment I feel that the level of safety that we have been assured is, in fact, a fallacy, then I for one will be on the first plane home.

The Lotus Position

Sooooooooooo…..

In 2010 Lotus returned to Formula 1. But Lotus wasn’t happy that Lotus was called Lotus and went to court over who had the right to call their racing team Lotus. In 2011 Lotus started sponsoring Renault, who also provided engines for Lotus so we had two teams known as Lotus Renault.

Lotus entered a team in GP2 but called it Air Asia and ran in red and white but mid-season changed to green and yellow when they renamed themselves Caterham Air Asia, which was confusing because Lotus had started to sponsor ART and were also green and yellow.

So this year in F1 Lotus Renault became Lotus and Lotus Renault became Caterham, with Lotus being title sponsor of Lotus and with an option to buy the team. However, today there has been a revelation on the oracle of all things motorsport (www.autosport.com) that Lotus is no longer sponsoring Lotus and no longer has an option to buy the team, but Lotus will still be known as Lotus although it is unclear whether the team owners are still interested in buying Lotus because Lotus isn’t owned by the people it was.

Lotus still sponsors Lotus in GP2 which is no longer called ART, just Lotus, while Caterham will still be Caterham in F1 and GP2, but not in WSR where there will be a new team called Caterham Arden. Caterham competes against Arden in GP2… can you see where this is going?

(Come on… someone was going to do it)