Back pain puts Heidfeld in doubt for French Grand Prix BMW Saubers Nick Heidfeld could miss Sunday's race at Magny-Cours, after complaining of back pain during Fridays practice sessions for the French Grand Prix. Heidfeld aggravated an injury sustained in recent testing at Silverstone. I stopped early because I wanted to save my back, said Heidfeld. Last week at the Silverstone test I had some problems. I can still feel it and as a precaution I want to have it checked today." He is being examined at the Centre Hopitalier Pierre Beregovoy in Nevers. A decision must be taken tonight and put before the race stewards ahead of practice on Saturday, if BMW Sauber decide that they need to use reserve driver Sebastian Vettel for the second race in succession. Vettel stood in for Heidfelds team mate, Robert Kubica, at the last round at Indianapolis while the Polish driver rested following his Canada crash.
Vettel must be the luckyest spare/test driver there has been in a long time!!! go ask Wurz or Badoer...
I don't like the sounds of this. Nick is clearly the best driver for BMW and Vettel hasn't done so great imo. If it rains, it will be even worse. Remember Robert Kubica last year in the rain? Spun a few times and eventually wore down his rain tires DSQ'ing himself from the race. Hopefully Nick can race on Sunday...
Yeah but his spins were due to more of a bad strategic decision. As the track was drying he came in and changed to slicks before everyone else, except maybe Speed, it was obviously too soon though. Everyone else waited almost 10 more laps to come in. So i'm just saying it wasn' a driving fault, but a strategic one.
it'll be interesting to see what BMW does. the next race is just next weekend, so i wonder if they wanna risk running Nick here, retiring him halfway thru the race should the problem persist, and miss the next race, or play it safe and run Seba with it.
I'd hate to see Nick miss a race. But I'd hate more to see him miss the nine after this one. Watch the G-meters. Racers *are* atheletes. If you're not fit, ... wishing won't make it well.
But you don't think being a rookie in one of your first races had nothing to do with it? Something tells me more experienced drivers wouldn't have done that with dry tires. It's not like it was the first time a guy went out in the rain on dry tires in the wet. In fact, I remember Alonso coming out of the pits on the dry tires that race and only overshooting turn 1 right next to the pits. He was fine after that.
well, normally, it's always the driver's choice of tyres in this kinda conditions. and yes, he did make a mistake, but, he's just a rookie at that time. no big deal.
Right, but as I said Kubica was the first to come in and change tires. Alonso came in around 10 laps later as the track was drying. It appeared that other teams waited to see how it went with Kubia before they brought their drivers in.
