Vijay Mallya said he will make his decision on the drivers before Christmas, there were even suggestions that the announcement may come this week. And AutoMoto365.com already came up with an exclusive one:
“Automoto365.com can exclusively reveal to its loyal readers this morning that the second seat at Force India has finally been secured by none other than former Renault racer, Giancarlo Fisichella.”
According to GrandPrix dot Com owner of the AutoMoto356 is NTZC, company founded by Nicholas Todt. There is an obvious connection to Ferrari – the engine supplier of Force India F1 team. So it looks like there may be some credibility to the story. While this move for Fisichella would not surprise me, the way the information got out does. Why would this news be published first by a French website and not by Force India team ? Let’s see what Force India will have to say about this.
The last news item on Force India official website is “Force India progress review with Dr. Vijay Mallya”, published on December 13, 2007.
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Good for Fisi! He’s always been one of my favorites. Still, it doesn’t make sense to me to hire an F1 veteran, with so many young drivers as options.
He hasn’t been officially announced yet, but an Austrian paper already had news yesterday saying Klien lost out the seat to Fisi…
I think Fisi makes sense at this stage for Force India. They need to develop their car, they are building up a team, two rookies might not work well…
I guess it all depends on their funding situation. I thought most of the 3rd tier teams had a strategy of bringing in young up and coming drivers and then profiting off their move to the higher tier teams.
And I’m not sure Fisi is the best choice to build a car. He’s not given me the opinion that his strength is car set up, especially after last season where Renault fell off the face of the earth without Alonzo.
Money is not really a problem for the team now, they have billionaire owner behind them…
Fisi may not be the best choice, but what are the other options – Ralf Schumacher, Christian Klien or Liuzzi. While I think that for example Liuzzi may be better as a driver for them in a long term, to have Fisi for 2008 would work for them better. I would not be surprised if they give Liuzzi the 3rd seat and promote him to race drive from 2009
Your right, in that the options for bigger name drivers is limited. Fisi and Ralf are the only options. I still think they are better looking for the next Hamilton or Kubica, but perhaps they can still acheive that goal with the 2nd seat.
I would love to see an American in a seat…but not sure their is one ready to make the jump. Rahal was absolutely fantastic two years ago in juniors, but his rookie season in Champ Cars didn’t wow anyone. Andretti had a couple hot races in IRL, but not enough overall.