That's the thing,it's completely open for next year.Don't expect a lot of shuffling to happen,but the potential is there.

Toyota are unlikely to retain Trulli, says Autosport. And Williams seek an early end to their Toyota engine deal. There's a lot going on, at the moment.

Or not....

Petrov won the GP2 feature at Valencia overnight. Given the way he held off Hulkenberg - who I expect will be promoted to a Williams seat next season - the Russian is making a pretty strong case for being thefirst of his countrymen in Formula One.

Nakajima to Toyota, then? They'll want a Japanese driver, but I can't help but think they'd be better off cutting him loose and running with Kobayashi.

If Trulli is let go, then I think Nick Heidfeld is the clear #1 in their eyes as a replacement.

To fulfill the role of fast young #1 driver, they could pursue Robert Kubica, although, I think this is unlikely.

It would not be a surprise to me to for the ex BMW drivers to end up as teammates again.

Sauber-Ferrari?

Would not come as a shocker with Mercedes seemingly getting "customer" engine deals with alot of teams.

More cars running your engine is more sales obviously but also more mileage to gather data on.

Toyota have made it pretty obvious they want to keep Glock.

Toyota made it clear they want to keep Glock and from a commercial point of view I can't see them running 2 German drivers; not so interesting for sponsors.
I think Heidfeld could end up at Brawn.

No, he won't. We've covered this elsewhere.

NH to Brawn is the most likely, according to many sources.

All we now need is for Red Bull to get a tiny bit of advert space on the Sauber (if the story's true) and we're back to the nineties.

Sure is. Just echoing what MWhitmarsh said but until the Alonso situation is put in place, nothing is sorted. And the Alonso situation will only be solved once Ferrari know what to do with Kimi.

Am I the only one who thinks ALonso would not live up to the Ferrari hype? I forsee 2 things happening - Massa beating him or ALonso/Ferrari not being the dominant force people expect and other team like McLaren, RBR, Brawn beating them at almost every single race.

The thing is people have not woken up to the fact the whole Ferrari/Schumi/Brawn era is over. Having ALonso wont mean jack as I dont think he is better than Kimi or Massa.

Yes you are the only one.

Okay, in case you don't know how this usually works, when you say that you have sources, you usually supply them so we can check it out ourselves rather than havingto take things on blind faith.

Yes you are the only one. Alonso no better than kimi and massa?

How do you know that he is the only one?

"Old" Massa would have the small edge over Alonso in qualy IMHO. I don't know about race pace, but probably they would have been pretty matched, or it would be very depended on circuit characteristics. FM matured and is/was very fast, can't you just approve that some drivers do improve?

No,you're most certainly not. Felipe's well settled at Ferrari and it's not going to be easy beating him.If a rookie (with a lot of experience in the lower formulae behind him) easily matched him in their very first race together,Felipe Massa-who even MS has a high opinion of-will easily match him. The bloody injury would have taken its toll,though.

Kobayashi's having a TERRIBLE year in GP2 Europe. At this point I have every reason to believe he isn't in the same league as Nakajima, which already wouldn't be very good to begin with. I think Toyota would be better off cutting both of them loose.

Wouldn't be surprised to see Petrov moving to F1, he is fairly competitive and I believe he'd come with a big bag of cash.

I think Hulkenberg would be on for Williams next year.

He's cleaning up in GP2, and he appears to have plenty of cash behind him.

I think he'd be a good fit for the Williams second seat, particularly if they've cast off Nakajima.

Kovalainen has only one or two races before McLaren decides what they want to do (since it will likely coincide with the Alonso-Ferrari announcement in 3 weeks).

If Mac can get Rosberg, they should imo. Heikki cannot maintain race pace.

Yep, all the other dominos will fall into place once Alonso's move is firmed up.

The tricky thing for Ferrari is that Raikkonen is getting better and better this season.

Its stating to look like Trulli and Glock are going to be available - Toyota to pull the plug. Where do they fit in?

and Massa is not guaranteed to ever be fit to race at F1 levels again. Ferrari are in a bit of a quandary. Bring in Alonso, ditch Kimi & Massa unavailable... hmm, Schui makes comeback?

That's what makes Ferrari's situation so facsinating I reckon.

If we take it as fact that Alonso has a Ferrari contract next year either Massa or Raikkonen will have to go.

Massa seems pretty firm should he recover.

Which means Ferrari will have to pay out Raikkonen's (massive) contract.

To my mind it doesn't make sense to pay Raikkonen not to drive when he is performing quite well at the moment.

Either way, there is a very tough decision to be made.

I think we can discount Schumacher completely.

That would make it a four-into-two situation.

The decision is not based on his performance this season anyway, won't make any difference to the outcome. If Santander agrees to pay, Alonso is in.
The tricky thing remains Massa, you really need a adequate 3rd driver ready, and Badoer is not.

Plenty of good drivers available; Piquet, Bourdais for instance. What about Fisichella (after this season)? I reckon McLaren/Mercedes, as part of a deal (for instance, if they offer the engine for free) will probably push Vijay Mallya to put somebody like Paul Di Resta alongside Sutil.

The practical thing would be to drop Massa instead of dropping Kimi, but they'd look like utter assholes in terms of PR. To abandon a guy after a bad injury.

Yeah, but it's a bit mad to pay a guy like Raikkonen mega bucks not to drive don't you reckon?

If they pay him off his full wage (plus damages for breach of contract) we're talking around US$40m aren't we?

Bourdais was paid his full outstanding contract plus USD$2.1m in damages by STR just a month ago...

Yep, I can't see how they could possibly do that without looking like utter monsters.

Kimi's salary is upward of $40m, probably even above $50m. Remember, he signed a 3-year, $153m contract in 2006 (for 2007 to 2009). I reckon the additional year (2010) will be paid at the same yearly rate.

He'll probably replace the nice, but lackuster Nakajima in the two or three last races, to get him up and running before next season. With Williams ditching Toyota next year in favour of a more competetive engine, they don't need to obey Toyota any longer. Hulkenbergs backers can surely afford to "solve" any contractual issues with Nakajima/Toyota.

Hans V.

Yep, and that is a hell of a lot of money to tip down the toilet.

It's reported that Ferrari are offering Kimi half his 2010 salary to walk.

But his performances are getting better and better this year, so why would he accept such a deal?

For Ferrari it's either going to be hugely expensive, hugely messy, or hugely unpopular (if Massa is shown the door because Raikkonen is too expensive to sack).

Interesting times boys...

Ferrari can stomach the financial loss... if they have to sack Raikkonen and give him his full salary + a penalty (if, for instance, a judge orders them do pay, as a compensation for breaking the contract), they WILL do it.

Swapping Kimi for Alonso provides a lot of upside(s) for Ferrari. Better recognition/appreciation in Spain, better credibility (as Alonso is recognized as the best in the business), and probably some bonuses from Santander. Lastly, Ferrari is backed up by FIAT, and FIAT, AFAIK is not doing too shabby amidst the recession.

EDIT: Plus, supposedly, Santander is sponsoring the team + paying Alonso's ($30-$40m salary).

That is a sh!tload of cash though, even in the crazy world of F1.

The amount they'd be burning would be enough to run a team for a year under that $40m budget cap proposal!

I hope Kimi squuezes every dollar there is from Ferrari for their lack of respect. 40 million for doing nothing? Ferrari will be a laughing stock again.

True, and that's why I don't they will do it.

Jean Todt and Mosley's ghost will go nuts.

Apparently, one reporter during the French-Canadian F1 broadcast (who was at the track during the weekend) supposedly heard that Ferrari will announce that Alonso has signed for 2011 onwards. The reporter told the news just before the race started.

He's also the one who started the rumor about Montreal replacing Abu Dhabi earlier in the season, but he's got the hooks with Renault/Flavio though (the reporter is a Frenchman), so I'd trust him more in this case.

I agree. I get the feeling the team is treating Kimi like last weeks garbage.


another matter: Is Ferrari moving end of season celebration from Mugello to Spain because of Santander or Alonso, or both?

what about Santander? I thought they've already signed up for 2010.

Since there's still a theoretical chance that some other team might want Räikkönen, I hope Ferrari stop being such dicks about this and either fire him, like, today or announce in no uncertain terms that Alonso will only arrive in 2011, no one's going to be fired, end of debate. If they're going to pay him off anyway, surely they can sack him now and argue about money later. That would be the decent thing to do.

Yep, totally.

I can't understand why they resigned him on a two year deal last year.

Surely a one year deal would have kept their options open more.

And what about Santander?
Or maybe some of you think in hard recession times someone will pay 25 mln euro for nothing?
Nonsense.

Santander did not get harmed that much by the recession/financial meltdown.

I am sure they will become Ferrari's title sponsor after 2011.

um..I was only asking if Alonso is signed for 2011, does it mean Santander will begin their sponsorship for Ferrari a year before Alonso gets on board.

Really? How do you know? All banks suffer from recession because all of them connected.
BTW one of the rule in recession time no matter how successful you or not is decreasing costs. If you work somewhere you could feel it.

I don't see any reason why you need to throw away 25 mln euro if you can just wait 12 month.

Neither do I.

And don't forget that's probably the minimum.

Kimi would no doubt go for damages too, and as Bourdais has shown, the team would probably settle rather than get dragged into the courts.

The amount of money at stake here is enough for them to keep Kimi I reckon.

I've been quite critical of Raikkonen's form in the past 18 months, but you have to hand it to him, he's looking quite strong these past few Grands Prix.

Oh. I can't see any reason why they can't. BTW you know how much Santander pay for Mclaren in 2008? 16 mln dollars - so I have doubts they can dictate terms for Ferrari.

It was a one-year deal. That's the hysterical part. They already had him under contract for 2009, the renewal was for 2010 only. I'd find this utterly hilarious if they weren't messing with my boy's career.