Davidson/Heidfeld to test for Williams

Being German may help Heidfeld although that did not work when he was fighting Kimi for a Mclaren drive.....

 

I like Quick Nick a lot and wish him the seat, but I doubt it: Maybe it is only hype by the (British) media, but Davidson to me looked incredibly promising. He consistently blew away his team mates as well as most of the field on Friday mornings. Now you can argue he didn't have to play by the same rules (save the engine, little fuel, new tires), but still the kid was blazingly fast EVERY single GP.

Nick to me looks like a has-been and Davidson like a raising star. We'll see.

 

But look at Davidson's times. He was often the fastest or 2nd fastest driver (behind Michael) of the entire field!

 

Agreed. I too would favor Davidson over Nick in this scenario for precisely your reasons.

 

My memory might be selective, so I look forward to your statistics.

As I said I like Nick a lot and he deserves better, but somehow he never clicked. He had bad and ok cars, but never accomplished much with them. In a way 2004 was almost his most impressive season in the POS Jordan. Maybe it is his attitude, maybe his manager, but somehow I think his career just doesn't take off.

Looking at those drivers, they had all one thing in common: Lack of consistency (in Kimi's case it was his first year). But hey, maybe Sir Frank sees that differently and gives him the final chance. If he gets the Williams seat and doesn't deliver, well, then he can join the DC group.

 

I just did an average for the first Friday practice and he moves up to a 4.3. He scored fastest time in 4 GPs. Also keep in mind, that he managed that despite the fact, that many tracks he has never seen before the first Friday practice.

 

Average position of all 18 first practice sessions:

Davidson: 4.3
Button: 7.7
Sato: 13.1

 

I didn't know that, but that is interesting.

As I was putting these results together I actually started to wonder: It kinda looked like there was a pattern in the numbers, which sorta had Davidson on 1st, then Button 8 places down and Saton another 8 places down from there.

Since it was so consistent on almost all the circuits, I wondered whether this is a BAR tactic: Give the test kid the lightest fuel, your #1 guy some more fuel and your #2 guy even more. That way they could get test times and usage data on the car for three different configurations in just one session.

If that were true, then the real strength of Davidson wouldn't be so much in the position achieved but rather in the consistency he showed throughout most of the year. And maybe the answer is even simpler: Maybe the B in BAR was trying to get some good publicity from the press before the accountable action started.

Again, just a thought and a speculation.

 

Wow. I guess that also explains why Sato got first into F1. Pretty dominant I agree.

 

Junior formulae are good benchmarks but sometimes weird things happen that don't translate into direct F1 comparisons. Justin Wilson beat Webber and Pizzonia in F3000 (1999) and they currently are in very different situations.

Has anyone heard of a Mike Wilson (best ever karting driver, 6 times world champion) who beat Senna every single time?

Even M. Schumacher's record was not that impressive in other formulae.....Wendlinger and Frentzen beat him in F3.

It seems some drivers (like Schumacher and Senna) are just naturals for the demands of F1

 

Davidson is a test driver, Sato is a racing driver.

Naturally Davidson in the Friday practise is going to be faster because the team will be testing God only knows what ... he is not even interested in completing the weekend, just that test.

The time comparisons are completely meaningless. Davidson probably has next to no fuel in the car, while Sato (and JB) are doing full fuel load tests.

Pete