Romain Grosjean

[axle]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/75506

He's definitely making a case to replace Piquet.

[lebesset]

romain grosjean isn't french , he is swiss ....but he has a french competition licence
but the french are desperate to have a 'french' driver , so a french competion licence is the way to go for him , don't forget renault is controlled by the french government who ,I read recently , are prepared to pay big bucks to get a french gp back on the calender

[ISLAMATRON]

De Resta is mo betta

[Timomies]

I think Grosjean is great driver but would he be any better than Piquet right now? I mean, he hasn't drive R29 and they cannot test during season, so he would be driving the car first time (in real track) at FP1. He would have huge pressure, and very much to learn in short time. I think Renault should give him a seat next year. After he has won a Gp2 championship

[hulmerist]

i felt really sorry for piquet after hearing his interview on the bbc converage

you saw a man completely down, with zero confidence and massive pressure to deliver in a poor car

i'd be surprised if he doesn't get in trouble for what he said in this though

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 086971.stm

"fernando is flavios.....perfect little son who doesn't complain about anything"

[ISLAMATRON]

All he needs to do is keep in on track, and that goes for Heikki too... nobody is expecting him to be anywhere close to Alonso, all they want him to do is finish every race & collect any points that may fall into his lap, much like Buemi at the start of the year.

And I'm sure the team wants him to just STFU, and stop downing the team in the media... Alonso does that enuff for both drivers.

[PNSD]

Downing the team in the media?

hardly besides, he doesnt need to. We can all see Alonso can do nothing wrong in Flavio's books. Piquet is the new Button, Trulli and Giancarlo... Renault really do need to sort it out. IMHO Flavio is destroying Piquets career. The guy is clearly talented, he showed in lower formulae and has shown flashes of speed in F1 too, but like Button in 2001, 2002, like Trulli in 2004 and like Giancarlo in 05 and 06 the preferential treatment is clear for all to see and its wrong. All drivers mentioned had serious performance issues which as proved in later, or past years is down to confidence. Look at Button and Trulli now, in teams they know want them and give them support.

You can say an F1 driver does not need to be treated like that, doesnt need the support etc. But that is totally not true, an F1 driver in the right enviroment can do amazing things. It is upto the teams to provide that enviroment. Piquet needs to leave Renault or Renault need to hire a boss who can support two drivers, not one.

Piquet has been relativley quiet about the whole thing, he has not responded to all the rumours about him being replaced or even the bad things said about him constantly. He has kept quiet trying to get on with it but as he is proving it is abit more difficult that simply switching a switch as some people seem to think.

Besides all that, Romain has not shown anything more than what Piquet did in GP2 imo.

I am 100% Piquet in another team will no doubt show ALOT more promise than at Renault. Flavios managment of his drivers is poor, very poor. Piquet needs another team, I just cant see who will give him another chance. Dont get me wrong, I am hardly a Piquet fan, but I do recognize the guy is better than what appears.

[ISLAMATRON]

HAmilton did just fin next to Alonso

Piquet just does not have it.

[PNSD]

Lewis is a world champion.

Piquet is not WDC material. That is generally accepted.

Dont forget Lewis matched Alonso in a team that well Lewis was made for! Almost the same as Piquet and Alonso. Lewis was Rons golden boy the same way Alonso is Flavios. At the time Alonso was a two-time champ and had experienced all sorts of pressure before Lewis and Mclaren.

Piquet has not. incomparable situations.

[Ciro Pabón]

I think Piquet, like the rest of the grid, is an excellent driver. Sometimes you find the way, sometimes you don't. Nelsinho must have patience and he probably knows it.

Grosjean is a very good pilot, you have to be one to win a GP2 race.

I'm glad my cable operator is showing the GP2 race after F1, Saturdays and Sundays. Is the same for you?

Great races, very competitive, full of passion and entertainement.

BTW, does anybody knows the main differences with F1? I'm too busy right now to delve into GP2 regulations (in part because of you guys, try to make this "opinion thread" a nice one, and I will be thankful!).

[Giblet]

Right from Wiki: I don't think it has changed much since the 2006 cars.

Chassis
The 2006 specification GP2 Car has been designed by Dallara Automobili. The 2006 GP2 car features a biplane rear wing, with the triplane rear wing used in 2005 only to be used at the Monaco race. The front upper and lower wishbones have been reinforced, as have the front and rear suspension uprights.

Engine
The 4 litre Renault V8 engine features internal, cartographic and software upgrades designed to improve performance and fuel consumption. The engine produces about 580 hp (432.5 kW).

Gearbox
The 2006 gearbox has been manufactured by GearTek and features an 8-position barrel with ratchet body and software upgrades as well as a new transverse shafts fixing system designed to facilitate improved gear selection.

Tyres
Bridgestone is the single tyre supplier for the GP2 Racing Series. Although grooved dry tyres were used when the series started in 2005, regulations changed in 2006 in favour of slick tyres.
Bridgestone is supplying three slick tyre compounds for racing on dry (soft, medium and hard), as well as a wet specification. The choice of tyre being raced is made jointly by the manufacturer and the GP2 Series organizers prior to each event.

Other parts
Brembo is supplying a new development of monobloc brake calipers and disc bells, which are exclusive to GP2.
The car also features internal cooling upgrades, a new water radiator, radiator duct, oil/water heat exchanger, modified oil degazer, new oil and water pipes and new heat exchanger fixing brackets.

Performance
According to research and pre-season stability tests, the 2005 model can go 0 to 200 km/h (124 mph) in 6.7 seconds. The car has a top speed of 320 km/h (198 mph) meaning that it is the fastest single seater racing car bar Formula One and Indy cars. The cars are predicted to be reliable and should run within less than ten seconds per lap of the typical Formula One car.

[TheMinister]

I don't think Piquet is quite as bad as he seems- this season he's just been Mr Unlucky. Crashed twice due to faulty brake ducts, knocked off the track a couple of times. It seems more and more to me that the Renault is a total pig of a car (after seeing Alonso struggling yet again in practice yesterday) and Piquet can't quite handle it. Alonso is just about managing to keep it on the track, but even so he's right down the pan.

I think drivers need a season or two in a good, stable car to really get to grips with the sport, rather than being pitched in at the deep end with an unstable crashmobile. Look at Hamilton- he had a rookie season in an extremely driver friendly car, still made a few mistakes, but now he is coping admirably with this season's horror story of a mclaren. He seems to have learnt how to push it to the absolute limit, and then take a small step back from that- whereas Piquet just seems to be trying that little bit too hard for the car.

[Miguel]

Right from Wiki: I don't think it has changed much since the 2006 cars.

Chassis
The 2006 specification GP2 Car has been designed by Dallara Automobili. The 2006 GP2 car features a biplane rear wing, with the triplane rear wing used in 2005 only to be used at the Monaco race. The front upper and lower wishbones have been reinforced, as have the front and rear suspension uprights.

They changed to another chassis in 2007.

This is Hamilton in 2006:


And this is Gosjean last year:


The new chassis was more F1-like, with some aero tweaks on the bodywork plus a raised front wing. I don't understand why they raised the front wing, though, as it was clear it was one of the reasons why F1 cars were having issues following each other.

Please note that there is also a GP2 Asia series, run in, doh, asian circuits, such as Sepang, Sakhir and Shanghai. It takes place during the F1 off season and 2007-2008 (the first season) featured the old GP2 cars, in order to give them some more running.

Back to Grosjean, he looks pretty promising. He had however a nasty accident in the second race at Monaco (I personally blame Zuber) and then his weekend at Turkey hasn't been preciselly stellar. So much so that Vitaly Petrov has taken the lead. In my opinion, he and Hulkenberg are probably the most promising drivers there, but if none of them display some magic performances, their path to F1 will get tougher.

Competitively speaking, however, GP2 is top notch. You only have to see that Kobayashi, winner of the "winter series" is currently struggling. Something similar could be said of Lucas di Grassi, who had an excellent second half season last year and could have won the season had Renault released him earlier from his test driver duties. di Grassi has always looked more promising than Buemi, who seems to have taken the measure of Bourdais (a 4 time CART champion!) these first six races.

EDIT: Grosjean seems a bit too eager to prove his worth. That was seen in Barcelona last year and is probably seen in his overtaking attemts.

@The_Minister,

Alonso said he spent the full Saturday Practice running with ~50 kilos of fuel. By the way, Alonso did a third run on Q3 to compensate for his mistake, and that has probably cost him two laps of fuel (6 kg) today.

[TheMinister]

Fair enough, but the point is both Renault cars made the same mistake, which seems a little more the coincidental to me.
Although you may be right, it could be that Piquet is just lacking in pace.

Going slightly off topic- what makes one driver quicker than another driver? Is it that Alonso is better at ragging the car round the circuit at stupid pace without making errors? Or is he more sensitive to the little things?
I just wonder if you told Piquet that he had to go as fast as Alonso with all the telemetry (ie same braking points, same entry/exit speeds on corners, same gearshifts, lines and apex clips) where would the difference between the two drivers arise? Would Piquet crash first? Or is he just slow because nobody has shown him all Alonso's stuff....?

[Miguel]

Fair enough, but the point is both Renault cars made the same mistake, which seems a little more the coincidental to me.
Although you may be right, it could be that Piquet is just lacking in pace.

Oh! Don't get me wrong! I'm 100% sure Piquet had brake issues. He's currently like 2-3 tenths slower than Alonso, not 6.

Going slightly off topic- what makes one driver quicker than another driver? Is it that Alonso is better at ragging the car round the circuit at stupid pace without making errors? Or is he more sensitive to the little things?
I just wonder if you told Piquet that he had to go as fast as Alonso with all the telemetry (ie same braking points, same entry/exit speeds on corners, same gearshifts, lines and apex clips) where would the difference between the two drivers arise? Would Piquet crash first? Or is he just slow because nobody has shown him all Alonso's stuff....?

Those are two very good questions I just don't know how to answer.