Jaime Alguesuari

Ross Balfour · May 22, 2012

I think Jaime should go back to WSR or GP2 next year and try to get back to F1 the Grosjean way. I think he's more than capable of it

Markus Neumann · May 22, 2012

Quite frankly, I see no reason to join in on the Alguesuari love fest. In my opinion, he's completely overvalued.

Sure, he scored quite a few points in the latter half of the 2011 season, but that was mostly down to luck and his team.
In Canada and Valencia, he mucked up the qualifying and then only made it into the points because of the strategy his team put him on/other drivers crashing out/other team's strategies (for example Sauber in Valencia) not working.
Same thing in Monza, he benefited from the crash at the start, probably wouldn't have made it into the points without that.
In Korea, he lucked out again with Petrov taking out both himself and Schumacher. ALG also got past Rosberg because he killed his tyres against the Ferrari.
Overall, Algersuari just scored his points on the back of other driver's bad luck.

That's also the reason for the big points gap to his team mate. Towards the end of the season, when the Toro Rosso got better and made scoring points easier, Buemi constantly DNF'd because of something that was not his fault, thus making Alguersuari look much better than he really is.
I could go on, but the point is: Alguersuari is not as good as he's made up to be.

Hampus Andersson · May 22, 2012

Can´t believe it but this might be the first thing we agree on.

Chris Jenkins · May 23, 2012

I think you have to put Alguesuari's performances into perspective.
He's only 22/23 and has over 2 ful seasons of F1 experience to his name.
So I think he has the potential to grow into a very talents and successful driver. He was just screwed over a bit by Red Bull.

Markus Neumann · May 23, 2012

2 1/2 seasons in a fairly decent midfield team which even has a win to its name is A LOT more than most young driver's get. I wouldn't call that "getting screwed over".

Chris Jenkins · May 30, 2012

But him stopping negotiations with other teams because Toro Rosso told him he had a seat for 2012, then being dumped on his ass is definitely getting screwed over!

Thomas Dougherty · May 31, 2012

Chris Jenkins said:
But him stopping negotiations with other teams because Toro Rosso told him he had a seat for 2012, then being dumped on his ass is definitely getting screwed over!

I agree with this but also you have to take in the aim of Torro Rosso.

The whole point of Red Bull energy drink owning them is to give young drivers a chance to drive an F1 car, perform with it, and farm the drivers for Red Bull Racing. Jaime was there for a relatively long time. If he's not performing to Red Bull's standards, then it's Toro Rosso's job to give a new driver a shot.

They just shouldn't have told him that he had a seat.

Chris Jenkins · May 31, 2012

Yeh I understand Red Bull's motives and maybe a change was needed, but they shouldn't give a driver any indication of his position if that's the case.

Alberto Casado · May 31, 2012

Markus Neumann said:
2 1/2 seasons in a fairly decent midfield team which even has a win to its name is A LOT more than most young driver's get. I wouldn't call that "getting screwed over".

The STR that Vettel had was clearly a better car (compared to the rest of the grid) than the STR of late years. And besides, the never-gets-old win was in not exactly standard conditions (Monza, wet). Bourdais (not suspect of being the greatest driver ever seen in F1), qualified 4th in that car and circuit. He also got into Q3 on 6 out of the 7 last GP that season. That was simply unthinkable a couple of years later. The letters on the car being the same do not make the car any faster than it is. It was not a fairly decent midfield team (that was Force India or Mercedes or Renault). It was the backmarker, excluding the three teams that we all know, and williams that just imploded in 2011.

Markus Neumann · May 31, 2012

Alberto Casado said:
The STR that Vettel had was clearly a better car (compared to the rest of the grid) than the STR of late years. And besides, the never-gets-old win was in not exactly standard conditions (Monza, wet). Bourdais (not suspect of being the greatest driver ever seen in F1), qualified 4th in that car and circuit. He also got into Q3 on 6 out of the 7 last GP that season. That was simply unthinkable a couple of years later. The letters on the car being the same do not make the car any faster than it is. It was not a fairly decent midfield team (that was Force India or Mercedes or Renault). It was the backmarker, excluding the three teams that we all know, and williams that just imploded in 2011.

In the latter half of 2011, when Red Bull supposedly told their sister team a few tricks (even though that's not really clear since it would be illegal), STR developed a very good car. They made big strides in the design of their EBD and developed side pods which inspired a lot of the designs we see this year. They were definitely the fifth strongest team after Mercedes and certainly capable of getting into Q3 on a regular basis. Unfortunately they had some reliability issues, but those mainly affected Buemi. Algersuari also wasted some points with stupid shunts like the maneuver in Hungary, when he tried to squeeze past Kobayashi and spun.