GP2 Asia: Nunes, Jakes & Al Fardan impress - What's their prospects for this year?

[chunterer]

A couple of standout performances in the first race at Sepang warranted a separate thread imo?

Diego Nunes silenced a lot of critics with a fairly comfortable win.

James Jakes also gave an impressive performance for Super Nova. He had looked like he might do well in the series during the first rounds of the season but seemed to struggle to adapt thereafter until now.

Al Fardan was the other standout, benefiting from the opening lap carnage he stormed up to 8th place and managed to keep the much more fancied Maldonado and Perez honest until the stops.

All three drivers had fairly contrasting reputations until now so assuming they have another good day tomorrow, what do their results today suggest about the respective drivers prospects for 2009 ?

[Shaddix]

Hamed al Fardan is a realy extreme example of bad paydriver

in F3 asia he pushed everyone off the track, then when he couldn't win he cancelled he just quited the championship

last year in the German F3 championship he ended 12th overal, and he still got a GP2 seat...

[sauber11]

They will all stay in gp2, Nunez has already contracted with Isport, while Al Fardan tested a lot with trident and he has budget.
Also Jakes , as i saw, got new sponsor lemac, so i hope he also have budget+tested already with DPR( british driver for the british team). And podium also will help to achieve that. So we will have a lot races to judge them again.
About results, Nunez was faster than i thought , didnt expect that.
Jakes and Al Fardan also were fast, but nothing special. Al Fardan not that much slower than Giga, who without jump-start could have earned 5th place.
Villa and Jakes just showed speed of super nova cars, pure speed. Driver like Hulkenberg could win there as easy as he did it with ART.

[Spudy]

I would say the time Nunes has been spending with iSport is starting to pay off already!! Very impressive drive and maybe has a shot at the title with them for main series. If he can continue that form with the best car he could have a decent shot at Grosjean and Di Grassi.

Al Fardan is a pay driver but is capable of driving well. This was a good drive from him today but lets not get too carried away that car he is in is as described by Chandhok, Glock, Senna and many others as 'mega'. I didn't think much of him pulling out of the Qatar race because of tyre graining. Utter rubbish, drivers have to drive through this so I still feel there is a very big question mark over him, plus the whole Bahrains great racing star for F1 thing is getting very tired!

Jakes, bright talent, I hoped Super Nova would have taken him through with them to Europe which was disappointing. Nevertheless I think he has a place hopefully with DPR and who knows in year 2 he might get picked up by a top team.

Nunes though, definately excited by that, everyone had all but written iSport off, I think van der Garde and Nunes will push each other hard and that can only be good. Role on Europe!

[Robbe]

I'm far more pessimistic about these 3 drivers:

Nunes drives for a top team in GP2, but Grosjean should be much faster, and Di Grassi brings experience and consistency. Maybe he will win a race in GP2, but the overall quality (we also have Hülkenberg, Perez, Kobayashi, D'Ambrosio, Parente, Filippi, Valsecchi, Mortara, Maldonado, Rodriguez, Villa, Zuber and Petrov who are capable of wins) is higher in Europe, so I don't think he's a dark horse for the championship.

Al Fardan is on the entry list for another season of German F3, so I think Trident will start with Rigon and Teixeira.

Jakes... he hasn't even scored a point before this weekend, was outpaced by his ART teammates in F3, and DPR is anything but a top team. Look how difficult it was for Nunes last year. If Jakes gets the contract, he'll be lucky to score points at all...

[chunterer]

Interesting thoughts folks.

Nunes and Al Fardan did quite well again today it has to be said?

Jakes was a but unfortunate to spin out early so we weren't able to see if he could have produced another decent result.

I guess all three need to contimue their form onto Bahrain.

[Darcia1]

Originally Posted by Shaddix

Hamed al Fardan is a realy extreme example of bad paydriver

in F3 asia he pushed everyone off the track, then when he couldn't win he cancelled he just quited the championship

last year in the German F3 championship he ended 12th overal, and he still got a GP2 seat...

agree totally money doesnt buy talent