2012 FR 3.5 Off Season news etc

[Daisy]

Stevens will race for Carlin in 2012. Good line up together with Magnussen.

[bella]

no disrespect to will at all, i'm sure he'll do a good job, but i'd have really liked to see a quality second or third year driver in that seat. i hesitate to use the "waste of a drive" expression, but....

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by bella

no disrespect to will at all, i'm sure he'll do a good job, but i'd have really liked to see a quality second or third year driver in that seat. i hesitate to use the "waste of a drive" expression, but....

Maybe Nelson Pancia.......?

[bella]

heinous language barrier aside, yeah maybe! *definitely* albert costa, maybe even brendon hartley. in a fantasy world chris van der drift would have the funding for a drive like that. we're back to the potential thingy in the comments about ricciardo in the f1 forum thread i guess

of course, in a REAL fantasy world, maybe the team champions in a series like fr3.5 would receive a prize in the form of a sponsorship deal from an event sponsor that could equate to something similar to the €500,000 the eurocup winner gets towards a fr3.5 drive.

[chunterer]

Ha ha, like your thinking!

VDD faces a year on the scrapheap unless someone is willing to pick up his tab so to speak? It will be a terrible waste after the determination he showed to overcome the injuries and do so well in the early part of last season....

I am absolutely convinced that he is as capable or has as much 'potential' as the likes of Ricciardo and maybe even JEV given the tools to do the job, not just ocassional drives where he hardly has a chance to get into a rhythm.

Costa would be a real dark horse for the title if he returns.

[bella]

italiaracing reports yann cunha has signed for pons as well, so that's our second full lineup before christmas. sounds like they priced themselves too low for 2012

[WSR Fan]

Arthur Pic signs with DAMS for 2012.

http://www.dams.fr/wsr/index.php?lang=en

So, that makes it seven drivers officially confirmed for next year:

Lewis Williamson (Arden)
Kevin Magnussen & Will Stevens (Carlin)
Arthur Pic (DAMS)
Carlos Huertas (Fortec)
Zoel Amberg & Yann Cunha (Pons)

Kevin Korjus has recently stated that he will be in FR3.5 next year too. If so, then he has to be a massive early title favourite after his brilliant debut this year.

[Alex K]

Believe you have to include Nebylitskiy in KMP, Grubmuller in P1 and Zampieri in Target.

[cappra250]

And Danil Move for P1 too.

[chunterer]

Hopefully he'll find something else to do!

Danil's been around too long without doing anything much of note!

[dangaskin]

Richie Stanaway will be announced at Gravity on Monday or Tuesday I think it is. Can't remember the exact day Gravity Sport Management are announcing what their drivers are doing.

[jondownunder]

That will be an excellent signing after all the talk of the Nebylitskiys, Grubmullers and Moves of the world.

Will be very interesting to see how Stanaway adapts to the bigger cars.

[bella]

dams have taken delivery of their first new engine and chassis (source: twitter, @damsracing). can't remember if that's on or off schedule, but at least its turned up interesting to see the engine is badged renaultsport. no idea why that's interesting, it just is!

[bella]

also, reading italiaracing's article about nadia morini i notice that andre negrao's old man has become a shareholder and invested in draco. presumably that's another name to add to the 2012 drivers list then.

[WSR Fan]

Just looking down the standings of the Monte Carlo Rally after SS2 and saw an interesting name in 54th place - Nelson Panciatici.

It's not unusual for French circuit racers to move into rallying (Mathieu Arzeno, Stephane Sarrazin for example) so I wonder if this is just a one-off outing, or maybe it could be an option for him if there are no decent single-seater/sportscar drives out there?

[bella]

it's a one off - well, it's his second rally - for amusement purposes, allegedly. both his parents were rally drivers in their time, his old man competed in the monte for a couple of years and his mother did dakar, both in the 80s. he seems to be taking to it very well all things considering, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes once he gets the hang of it.

yann clairay also did the rallye du var at the end of the year - it's interesting that the young guys are looking at rallying as a way of continuing racing away from the single seater stuff. mathieu arzeno is currently in the top 10 overall in a s2000 car, pretty impressive

[chunterer]

Impressive stuff all round! I think it takes a brave and pretty chilled out driver to want to tackle on and off track sport these days.

I'm not just saying that becaise of what happened to poor Kubica, but because there's so much pressure on young drivers ro keep focussed and concentrate on their careers with all the money that is required nowadays you wonder if some of them even enjoy what they're doing.

It would be great if we ended up with a modern day Vic Elford or someone like that though, winning the FR 3.5 series having also won the San Remo Rally or something in the same year!

[bella]

his press release from the rallye du var is pretty interesting if you dodge the frenglish - particularly for the comments from his co-driver. it gives you an idea of the stuff a circuit driver has to adapt to when they try rallying out. here's the post-var rally one.

i agree with you that it's a shame more young drivers (particularly the ones with cash to burn) don't try out different disciplines. i think panciatici is lucky in that his backers are evidently a lot easier to pursuade, and generally everyone else is either so cash rich they're too busy squandering it or struggling to muster up the budget for the series they want to do in the first place.

the worst thing to come out of the kubica accident aside from his personal story is the attitudes that renault must have been completely barking mad letting him play with anything other than f1. all of a sudden it's percieved as a dangerous sport. which it is, if you bin it. the key is to keep it out of the trees - which is a lost art in the bigger single seaters where you don't get stuck in a gravel trap or wedged into a barrier every time you make a mistake. it's like there's an arrogance towards going off on the circuit, the kind which is punished heavily in rallying. i've never seen panciatici stuff it independantly into any form of barrier - he's missed braking points like everyone does but nothing that required a new part of the car. he's pretty epic in the wet too, which would suggest he's good at judging the levels of grip. in those respects he's ideally suited to rallying.

edit: famous last words about arzeno. he's binned it on stage 4. oops!

[WSR Fan]

Originally Posted by WSR Fan

Kevin Korjus has recently stated that he will be in FR3.5 next year too. If so, then he has to be a massive early title favourite after his brilliant debut this year.

And now he's officially confirmed at Tech 1 Racing for 2012. Great News!

[bella]

instant title contender, surely?

[chunterer]

Got to be!

He was mega sometimes last year, but also seemed to be very anonymous at times which I would put down to experience perhaps?

Who else do we think we'll see signing up in the coming weeks?

[WSR Fan]

Originally Posted by chunterer

Who else do we think we'll see signing up in the coming weeks?

As bella mentioned the other day, it looks like Negrao is 99% certain at Draco if indeed his father has bought into the team. As for the rest, Lucas Foresti has stated on his website that he will compete in the series this year and Giovanni Venturini has openly stated that he is in discussions with a few teams for this season too.

ISR have stated that Dean Stoneman is "very close to signing a contract" with them for 2012, but he's also recently said that Indy Lights could be an option for him too.

Richie Stanaway was linked with a Lotus GP3 seat for a long while, but it looks increasingly likely that he'll be on the grid with Gravity-Charouz, given his impressive testing pace. And all the rumours seem to suggest that GP3 champion Valtteri Bottas is more likely to do FR3.5 than GP2, possibly with Tech1 Racing.

Interesting few months ahead we have methinks

[W.A Trichlorostyrene]

Originally Posted by WSR Fan

And all the rumours seem to suggest that GP3 champion Valtteri Bottas is more likely to do FR3.5 than GP2, possibly with Tech1 Racing.

Weird, last week, Autosport had stated that Bottas was likely to focus on his WilliamsF1 testing duties, and not do any racing in parallel.

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by W.A Trichlorostyrene

Weird, last week, Autosport had stated that Bottas was likely to focus on his WilliamsF1 testing duties, and not do any racing in parallel.

He won't get much track testing so if Williams and his management are serious about a future drive with them they'll ensure he's racing.

[Valker]

Originally Posted by WSR Fan

And all the rumours seem to suggest that GP3 champion Valtteri Bottas is more likely to do FR3.5 than GP2, possibly with Tech1 Racing.

Bottas himself has told Finnish media that he won't be racing in 2012. Vale will do 15 friday practices for Williams.