Summer is traditionally time for some changes. I only went back as far as 2004, but there hasn’t been summer without drivers being dropped and replaced.

2004 - After German GP in July Cristiano da Matta was replaced by Ricardo Zonta in Toyota

2005 - After British GP in July Patrick Friesacher was replaced by Robert Doornbos in Minardi

2006 - After US GP in July Juan Pablo Montoya was replaced by Pedro de la Rosa in McLaren, later that month after German GP Jacques Villeneuve had to make way for Robert Kubica in BMW Sauber.

2007 - Early July Christijan Albers lost his seat to Marcus Winkelhock (replaced after one race by Sakon Yamamoto) in Spyker, later the same month Scott Speed got fired by Toro Rosso and Sebastian Vettel came in …

We haven’t seen any changes this year so far. But it is July now, who will be out and who will be in before July ends ?

Photo: Daimler Media

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There are no North American drivers on Formula 1 grid this year and it is hard to see anyone joining anytime soon. The United States GP has been omitted from calendar this year and at the moment does not feature on 2009 calendar either. Except for few sponsors the Canadian GP remains the only connection between North America and Formula 1. Here is a brief overview US and Canadian contribution to Formula 1:

1) First of all America created some chaos in F1 statistics . In the early days, between 1950 - 1960, the Indy 500 race was part of the world championship. European drivers usually did not take part in that race. Also the drivers and teams that raced at Indy did not take part in the European F1 races. The race was therefore pretty much irrelevant to the F1 World Championship. The Indy 500 winners from those years however feature in Formula 1 history charts.

2) Including the Indy 500 drivers mentioned above Canada and USA have supplied Formula 1 with 163 drivers. Three of them - Phil Hill, Mario Andretti (both USA) and Jacques Villeneuve won the F1 drivers titles.

3) The North American drivers claimed 50 race wins (11 of them are the Indy 500 wins), 54 pole positions (11 are Indy 500 poles), 53 fastest laps (again 11 of them are from the Indy 500 races) and 165 drivers made it to podium (here 36 came from Indy 500 as drivers could change in the cars those days). In total US drivers collected so far total of 998 points, Canadians 342 points.

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During the past month I published series of posts with the high resolution photos of all the teams and all the drivers (well almost, one driver is missing) of 2007 Formula 1 season for download.

For those who missed it, here are all the links:

Kimi Raikkonen
Lewis Hamilton
Fernando Alonso
Felipe Massa
Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica
Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen
Nico Rosberg, Alex Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima
Mark Webber, David Coulthard
Jarno Trulli, Ralf Schumacher
Sebastian Vettel, Scott Speed, Vitantonio Liuzzi
Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello
Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson
Adrian Sutil, Christijan Albers, Sakon Yamamoto

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