Luca Badoer

apparently a very good technical driver! I think, given the option of a mid-pack F1 ride (after 4 fruitless seasons) or a test driving gig with Ferrari...I'm going with the Scuderia.

 

I think there is a big difference between a race driver and a test driver. Luca is very quick and seems to be an excellent test driver and all round decent guy. However whenever he got under 'race' conditions it never seemed to click especially his overtaking ability, plus he was unlucky quite a bit too.

I think it's a bit like golf or any other sport where you can have a great game with friends but enter an actual tournament and the pressure etc turns you into much less of a player.

Just my 2c

 

My eternal image of this guy is watching him plow into the carnage from a first-lap F1 wreck in the rain, I believe in Austria, with the gas peddle flat on the floor into a pile of stopped or wrecked cars that had the track totally blocked. He never braked or even slowed down to avoid purposely plowing into all of those cars in front of him. Bob Varsha wondered what he thought he was doing. It was incredibly stupid. I would not be inclined to hire him to sweep the shop floors, fearing that he would destroy the shop!

 

Luca was horrible as a race driver.

 

I think he's vastly underated as a driver, and i can't believe that he hasn't been temped to leave Ferrari for a race drive in another team considering he's been a test driver for 10 years.

 

He really had not much of a choice: He was already at the bottom of the totem pole team wise (Minardi IIRC). Next step would have been out of F1 or Ferrari's test driver making a steady income.

And what the Scuderia thought of his racing skills became quite apparent in 1999 after Silverstone: They rather hired Salo than use Badoer as a MS stand-in.

 

Luca was still at Minardi in 1999 though, was he a test driver for Ferrari as well?

 

Luca is pretty average. He's fairly quick, but he's not as complete as the top guys are. He'll make mistakes, his racecraft is perhaps a little questionable, but his technical understanding and feedback is apparently valuble to Ferrari. I still question his technical worth though, as Massa and Raikkonen still do most of the testing.

 

Some guys are just meant to be test drivers. Wurz, De La Rosa, and Luca as well.

 

Whatever racecraft Badoer had is most likely washed off after so many years testing.

 

+1
They have a good set of technical skills but lack the racing ability as we clearly saw with Wurz's return to racing a few seasons ago.

 

And the moment Ferrari posts vacancy for his job as test driver....17,245,359 apps would be logged the first hour.

Not such a bad job.

 

C'mon, "Horrible" doesn't win a championship.

He's not driving for Ferrari, he's testing. It's not his job to win races, but to provide feedback to engineers on the car. Though Ferrari does seem to be peering up their butts to see if just maybe their head will fit, I have a feeling they know what they want, and are satisfied with his performance in his job. And they could probably find someone else to replace him if they were not happy.

Sorry, I have to laugh when regular people make armchair statements like this. It makes you look like a fatazz couch potato angry because his favorite pro running back wasn't fast enough, when he wouldn't beat his two year old to the fridge for the next beer.

How many guys here have won a championship? Just curious...

 

don't blame him for being a test driver for 10 years for Ferrari..really cozy job with no real big media/lime light headaches in Italy.....I do think he should be given a few races in the car if the opportunity arises

 

I just won my 3rd WDC on F1 2006 PS2 game

 

IMO beating Rubens and Coulthard is not a true good measure of Badoer's ability. Yes they won races but that was directly related to the cars they were racing and probably would have faded too if they had the same cars as Badoer.

For some reason it is very hard for Italian drivers to really shine. Italians populate the karting arena with excellent drivers but tend to perform much less in higher formulae. As you say it could be the pressure, the mentality or a combination of both.

 

This is interesting, winning F3000 / GP2 is not a good indicator to a driver's success in F1. Only Hamilton has clinched both titles in 23 years.

1985 Christian Danner
1986 Ivan Capelli
1987 Stefano Modena
1988 Roberto Moreno
1989 Jean Alesi
1990 Érik Comas
1991 Christian Fittipaldi
1992 Luca Badoer
1993 Olivier Panis
1994 Jean-Christophe Boullion
1995 Vincenzo Sospiri
1996 Jörg Müller
1997 Ricardo Zonta
1998 Juan Pablo Montoya
1999 Nick Heidfeld
2000 Bruno Junqueira
2001 Justin Wilson
2002 Sébastien Bourdais
2003 Björn Wirdheim
2004 Vitantonio Liuzzi
Under GP2
2005 Nico Rosberg
2006 Lewis Hamilton
2007 Timo Glock
2008 Giorgio Pantano

Badoer may not have gotten his fair chance but unfortunately (for him) he never impressed anyone at F1. Having said that I would gladly trade places with him.

 

Judging by that list, I'd say that would be a Champion not to hire!

 

No F1 team is hiring Pantano for sure...

 

4 WDCs from PC to PS3.

Laugh all you want, but the fact remains, that when Schumacher got injured in 1999 the Scuderia did not pick their 3rd driver Luca as replacement (as is the normal approach) but went outside to hire Mika Sato.

That about says it all regarding the racecraft of Badoer.

PS: A unique "achievement" of Badoer's career:
He is the driver with the most number of F1 races without scoring a single point.