Color Nick Heidfeld way more confident he’ll get a drive in 2011 than I am.
Nick has a fairly interesting interview over at Autosport, where he talks up his confidence, says he isn’t going to go to a “very slow” team and almost dishes the dirt on would-be “paid drivers” and the teams that fall for their promises of riches.
Yeah, Nick, that’s the way to ingratiate yourself for next season.
Here are his best quotes:
“I think it will happen, but you cannot be 100 per cent sure,” Heidfeld told AUTOSPORT about his chances of getting a race seat for 2011.
“Unfortunately at the moment in Formula 1 it is not solely about how you drive the car and what you can win in terms of talent, speed and clever engineering skills. Other factors play a role as well – and some of these things I cannot deliver compared to others.
“I don’t have some backing like the others, but we are speaking to some sponsors who say they are interested, but first they want to see where you drive and then they might jump on board.
“On the other side, I have seen in the past drivers say they will bring five, 10 or 20 million dollars, and I don’t understand how teams fall for it over and over again.
“At the end of the year, the teams find out the drivers didn’t bring anything. Sometimes you wonder from the outside how they can make these mistakes over and over again. I hope they don’t go for the money that is not even there yet.”
[snip]
“I think it is easy to guess where there [sic] positions are,” he said [about the slower teams]. “I am still not targeting going to a very slow team for example. I think they are doing a good job, but I don’t want to go there.”
I wonder who Nick had in mind when he was talking about the false promises of money. Well, who in particular, at least. At this moment, it seems like one of the decent drives out there — a seat at Williams — might be out of Nick’s reach just for this reason. We will have to see how Pastor Maldonado drives next month. And, of course, Nick’s Sauber seat has gone to a guy, Sergio Perez, with lots of promised backing.
If Nick really is ruling out the slow teams, I don’t see where he thinks he’ll end up. Renault? I don’t know, I can’t see Robert Kubica going for that. Now can I see Renault wanting to do BMW 2.0. Could Nick end up at Force India as Adrian Sutil’s replacement? That doesn’t make much sense to me, either.
Thoughts?
