Today it was announced that Lotus F1 Racing would run ex Toyota driver Jarno Trulli and ex Mclaren man Heikki Kovalainen for 2010. Both have won only one Grand Prix.
This seems to be a fairly good pairing for Lotus; age and experience alongside youth and potential. The only team which will have a more experienced line up is Williams although they will be fielding a rookie.
Jarno is a master over one lap, he really excels at qualifying. This suggests that he can squeeze the extra tenths out of the car which will be vital to any new team. He tends to suffer on race day and seems to be a fragile driver. However, his experience should also be an aid at the developing the car and he has worked very well alongside Mike Gascoyne before when they were back at Renault and at Toyota.
Heikki on the other hand, will only be entering his fourth season in F1. This should be an edge over the new teams with rookie signings (Senna at Campos, di Grassi probably at Virgin Racing) as he has a lot of mileage under his belt. He showed a good bit of talent back in 2007 but the step up to Mclaren seems to be one too soon. The situation and Heikki’s mentality probably took another big hit with Lewis completely dominating him. At a new team he’ll have to contend with Jarno who is inching closer to retirement and so will probably find things much easier.
He showed some ballsy moves at times, most notably at Suzuka this year with a splendid move on Fisichella after leaving the pits. The Finn seems to have the potential and Lotus has thrown him a lifeline-if he wants to stay in F1 he will have to deliver this time.
This line up gives Lotus a good starting point and time to shop around for a young, talented Malaysian to take over the cockpit when the time is right. Another interesting point to note is that Jarno’s now ex –teammate Glock will be racing for Virgin, a team that Lotus seems determined to beat.
The rumours are that Trulli has an option to leave at the end of each year of a reported three year contract so we’ll see how that develops.
Nice article Steph,hope you will produce more of this in the future.
Congratulations on your first article Steph! Great job! Glock at Virgin vs. Trulli at Lotus is definitely going to be interesting to see.. Lotus have just lost the Petronas sponsor to Mercedes GP, maybe a Schumi announcement is due soon?
Schumi deal seems more and more possible despite little movement from the man himself!
Everything seems to be moving in the right place for the comeback. Last time he agreed it was very rushed but if he says ‘yes’ this time he will be commiting so we should definately see him. I’m still sceptical but in F1 it wouldn’t surprise me.
Did you see the concept livery for Merc with Petronas sponsors? I hope it looks very different!
Well done Steph, great work as always, keep it up.