grumpyf1

Who'd have thunked it, eh? A seat in a Williams F1 car for 2012 is now the most hotly contested thing in F1 (if you ignore the piece of tarmac Lewis and Rubens want to be on, that is). With surprise signings at both Lotus Renault and Toro Rosso resulting it all their 2011 drivers getting the F1 heave-ho, it's fallen to Frank's mob to offer a chance for the refugees from these two teams, plus a few other drivers unceremoniously dumped in the constant quest for "the next Seb". Sutil, Senna, Petrov, Buemi, Alguersuari and D'Ambrosio all need a drive, and Barrichello certainly wasn't planning on calling it a day either. And, before you mention it, I know HRT have a seat free too, but... seriously... who'd go there? Apart from Pedro de la Rosa, of course. It's on the way to the pension office, I believe. I'm guessing Sutil, but with Maldonado signed up again for next year (along with some more hefty bags of cash), Williams need a decent d...

For some reason I'm not entirely clear about, Toro Rosso are an Italian Formula 1 team. Something to do with them formerly being Minardi, I think. Who were of course owned by an Australian. And people wonder why some folks find F1 confusing. It's pre-pre time! Some regulation tweakage this year means that, for the first time, Toro Rosso (Red Bull in Italian, geddit?!) actually did design their own car, and haven't just pinched the drawing from Red Bull's desk drawer in the dead of night when the security guard had popped out for a fag. Kind of hard then, to predict how they might do. They were pretty rubbish last year, but should at least beat some of the new teams - beyond that, anything else will be a bonus. Who are they likely to be able to beat though? Williams? Sauber? Tricky... Of course, none of this is helped by a fairly weak driver line up. Jaime Alguesuari raced for TR last year in the latter part of the season. And crashed a bit. He really needs to stop that ...