What's Nakajima doing next year? Is he going to join one of the new teams or is he doing another thing?

Driving a taxi in Tokyo hopefully, dire F1 driver

He has the pace to be in F1, just a little bit wild, but he's certainly not dire.

People shouldn't be so harsh on Nakajima. He didn't perform that bad at all. He is far better than most Japanese drivers we saw in F1 in the '90s including his father.

How many points did he get compared with Rosberg ?

Rosberg is not a bad driver but jeez he should have got some points

But Rosberg is proberly a future multy WDC.

I think he'll go back to Formula Nippon.

Ignoring the spelling in that post. What on earth has he shown to make you think that?

Exactly. The only reason Rosberg gained so much praise this year is his teammate. Montoya, Ralf, Heidfeld or Webber would have scored multiple podiums this year.

BS. He was always up with Rosberg in qualifying and beat him a fair few times. He's a bloody quick driver. For you to call him 'dire' is just complete s%&*.

Which is why Williams put up a massive fight to try and retain his services, oh hold on...

Ralf did get some odd podiums in poor cars when he was on it. But that's like 5 yeas ago or more.

Rosbergs contract ended this year and he wants to move to a team that can win races. Rosberg would not have resigned with Williams because he didn't want to stay.

He was lucky to be in F1 in the first place. He came along as part of the terms and conditions with Williams Toyota engine deal. The package was subsidised engines with Nakijima's waged also thrown in, and he drives for Williams and develops. The engine deal went well, Toyota paying his wages also went down a treat, but the development and improving part on Nakijima's behalf never materialised. He wont be missed because he is rubbish.

Yes, of course I meant the Ralf of days gone by.

IMO Nico has been the least impressive of the mainstream drivers the modern Williams team has run.

Reading between the lines though you kinda got the impression that Williams weren't particularly bothered if he went anyway. I remember reading reports that his engineers were growing ever more frustrated throughout the season as he wasn't ever consistent enough lap-after-lap.

Anyway, back to Nakajima. He was probably two-tenths away from being an F1 driver. I reckon he'll participate in FIA GT or similar next season.

You need evidence to back this up. Also, they proberly thought he would leave anyway so they thought there's no point fighting with McLaren or Mercedes.

Remember, McLaren wanted Rosberg over Kovalainen 2 years ago, but Williams wouldn't let Rosberg go because he had a contract.

He got 0 points when his above average but not amazing team mate got 30 odd, even Kobayashi got points in his 2nd race

I judge a driver by the points he gets compared with his team mate

Sorry, confusion betwixt me being in a court of law and having an opinion on a forum.

That's a bit like calling him the world's tallest dwarf. He was mediocre in F1 at best, there were a couple dozen drivers better qualified for F1 than him, he only got his seat via positive discrimination.

Rosberg was in the points 11 times out of 17 last season, Nakajima zero.

In the races he beat Rosberg precisely twice this season. Once at Singapore by a second after Rosberg was screwed by the safety car and lost half a minute. The other was at Monza where mechanical troubles cost Rosberg two laps. "Dire" is perhaps an understatement. "Total and utter waste of space" would be more accurate.

I mean a link to say where Williams weren't interested in him any more.

Nakajima is not so bad of course.

Good racer

Close to many points


Just a bit slower in qually and too many processional races in the season, not many races for racers to charge to good points results.


Good test driver for a new team

He has doen absolutely nothing to demonstrate he should remain in F1 and I would expect he won't be on the grid next year.

What you just said unfortunately has no merit, in context to what Rosberg achieved in the same car and the points differential.

He will do same thing as Heikki, probably fishing somewhere or playing banjo.

Heikki is definetely in F1 next year. Proberly at Renault or Force India.

As Rosberg is not special at all and scored 34 points while Nakajima none, you expect Naka to be in 2010 at his father home again

Rosberg is future WDC. Nakajima is a good driver who will drive for Lotus next year.

Rosberg is overated

Good solid driver but I would compare him with DC/Trulli/Webber/Barrichello sort of driver certainly not an Alonso, Schumi, Hamilton, Kimi

Rosberg is better than everyone except Alonso, Hamilton, Button, Vettel and maybe Massa. Definetely better than the drivers you mention.

Kazuki was surprisingly alright last year, but this season was completely pants. Expecting to see him move to Japanese Super GT, Formula Nippon, or a possible Toyota Le Mans programme. Don't think we'll ever see him back in F1.

The second Williams seat last year was the most wasted in F1. There is absolutely no way Uncle Frank would of considered Kazuki unless Toyota hadn't of forced him into the team. Imagine what two Rosberg's could of achieved? 60 odd points perhaps? Nakajima got none and he got interviewed, he knew it was down to him and him alone. He's not terrible, but why on earth would a team want to take him on? Unless of course, they offered free engines...

As a lifelong Williams fan, watching Rubens next year will not exactly enthrall me (Frank would probably agree), but at least the team has more of a chance. They have two drivers, which always helps in a two car team. What a good idea.

he wasnt that bad in 2008, so its a matter of where did it go wrong for him :/

Kobayashi's father needs someone to help in his sushi restaurant

We can't really judge Rosberg yet. Nakajima was far worse than him this season, but he is not a known quantity. I have to say that I was somewhat impressed with Nakajimas first races and his pre-F1-record is not too bad, but this year he was really disappointing. There are too many good or promosing drivers wanting to race in F1, so he will likely drop out. My feeling is that, unlike Nakajima, Rosberg improved a lot over the past years and may be a top tier driver soon. I would think that racing against Rosberg at Mercedes could be a career ending move for many drivers, but then again that is just an opinion with not much evidence to back it up.

Nakajima got screwed over by the Williams pit crew every time he was actually running well.

I doubt he will be in F1 even if he had managed to bag some points. He will probably go to SuperGT to drive one of the Toyota cars there

Rosberg is good but inconsistent, Nakajima was consistently significantly slower than Rosberg the last two seasons, and in 2009 never qualified in the top 10 and didnt score a single point.

He made it to Q3 five times this season, but Rosberg only missed Q3 at three races

Indy?

hes a toyota boy, and indycar is all honda

Absolutely; Nakajima is so underrated. He's had so much bad luck this year but he did score a decent amount of points in 2008 and if you check his qualifying performances then you'll see that he's usually around place 11-12, that's pretty good and far better than some other drivers like Piquet or Grosjean for example.

And Rosberg is one of the best qualifiers on the grid with Trulli & Massa so beiing beaten by him is no shame.
Nakajima is not slower as for example Kobayashi yet Kobayashi gets all the hype. In the same car I think they would be very closely matched and I suspect Nakajima might be the faster one.

Or maybe the Williams was noticeably quicker than the Renault all year and that's why Kazuki beat Nelson and Romain all year.

Williams did have a better car than Renault this year but still Nakajma's qualifying performances were strong. He just had the bad luck of having an extremely fast qualifying specialist like Rosberg next to him and he did beat him now and then (he beat Rosberg on a regular basis in 2008 but everybody seems to have forgotten that).

Some evidence?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WilliamsF1_Grand_Prix_results

scroll down to 2008, at least 6 races where Nakajima was better than Rosberg in the race. Not regular but still not bad.

My prediction: He'll be the token Japanese guy in Toyota's Le Mans programme in 2011, having spent 2010 driving in Super GT.

At races where Rosberg had a grid penalty, made stupid mistakes like at Silverstone or was screwed by the wrong strategy like Monza or China

Rosberg was lucky to have more points than Nakajima in 2008 because of the podium gifted to him in Singapore by Fisichella holding everyone up before his stop go penalty.

Nakajima future in Toyota's hands