Anthony Davidson

[Silk Cut Jaguar]

After glancing through the new issue of F1 Racing (with Webber on the cover) I noticed yet another spread on how great they think Davidson is, which led to wonder if Davidson being the next great British hope is the general feeling of F1 fans.

All of his hype seems to come from his performance as BAR test driver with his two retirements in the Minardi promptly forgotten, both of which are due to 'spin' on F1.com's results. I understand the Minardi is just a shed with a V10 bolted to the back but a guy with plenty of testing km's under his belt should be able to adapt to a lesser car surely, or at least keep it on the black stuff? Yoong did - most of the time.

Now he's trading lap times with Button, Barrichello and Schumacher on a regular Friday basis people are starting to take note, but Briscoe and Zonta were faster than their Toyota team mates on more than a few occasions aswell but because the car isn't capable of topping the sheets they barely got a murmer. So is setting Friday times a good yardstick to judge a third driver by?

Don't get me wrong, I hope the guy does eventually land a race seat - his lower formula CV is far more impressive than a lot of other drivers currently around, I just can't help but feel the Davidson 'hype' is a bit over the top.

[Kirk]

Especially since the latest incident where BAR wouldn't allow AD to test, I believe this subject has been exhausted. F1 can often be a real mystery and exercise in frustration, particularly for talented drivers trying to prove themselves.

[N I Tram]

I wouldn't reagard his two Minardi races too negatively. He had zero experiecne of the car before Hungary, didn't know either circuit, was within half a second of Webber in both qualifying sessions (no one else has consistantly got so close to Mark), and his best lap in the Hungary race was faster than Mark's. Most great drivers spin off a lot in their early races, as they're simply trying to find the limit. Guys who come into F1 and are slow but steady are usually the guys with no hope of being front-runners.

[RWC]

Good questions silk.I really don't know much about him at all and would be interested in hearing solid reasons for potential greatness.You're right about the friday times,it's abit dodgey reading too much into them
I don't know the answer and would love to hear more inside info and/or reasons he can be fast.It's mostly his consistancy in getting the fast times that makes us think?

As for spinning the minardi-i believe that a great driver just doesn't spin anywhere NEAR as much as lesser drivers no matter HOW bad the car.That said there are allways circumstances.In the end i guess one can only go by long term results .It's interesting that he was close to mark in times

[Stephen Green]

And in his formative years racing in karts was regularly running at the same pace or quicker than Jenson Button. I believe the reason for BAR not letting him test for Williams is that they want him for a race seat in 2006 on the basis that the team and most people expect Jenson to move back to Williams at the end of next year.

If you read the other posts on this subject you will see that Rennen (Ant's dad) has supplied comparisons between Ant and Jenson. It has also been made very clear that the Friday testing times are done with similar fuel loads and tyres to the race car.

[BootsOntheSide]

As far as the Fridays are concerned, Ant usually set his times during runs just as long as the other drivers, so he wasn't really using fresher tyres or less fuel. However, in most cases he was running the engine on higher revs, because his engine didn't need to last the whole weekend (as an aside, the extent to which third drivers can be expected to set faster times might increase next year, because of the limits of tyres which the race drivers will have to follow), and this will have helped his laptimes a little. In reality I don't think he's as quick as Sato, let alone Button, although he's clearly very promising.

[Stephen Green]

Boots, I take your point about higher engine revs but it was my understanding that Jenson and Takuma often ran with the same revs on Friday, but had revs reduced for the race itself. Either way I think the rev difference was only around 500 rpm so not a massive advantage over the race cars.

[krt917]

I'd say it is a bit early to really know. There certainly has been a lot of hype and his Friday performances have caught people's attention. There is, however, a difference between being a good tester and benig a great racer.

I hope that he is fantastic, but I don't thikn we can say yet; so far I'd say Button has showed us a lot more to suggest that he could be Britain's next champ.

[RWC]

Very interesting info guys.I'll check out those other posts stephen