Luzzi Signs deal with Ferrari (rumour)

[Alex Hodgkinson]

Liuzzi is MASSIVELY quick. Back in 2001, when he won the Formula A karting world championship he broke the absolute lap records at quite a few karting tracks on the calander () - records that still stand after the last three year's racing.

Maybe that doesnt sound much - but when you've got a grid of 30 of the worlds best kart racers and technology that is leaping forward all the time, lap records get broken all the time. They rarely stand for three years!!

[sonic]

Liuzzi is quick no doubt but at that point he'd already been a factory professional driver at a senior international level for about 3 years.

Personally I wasn't hugely impressed with him in the earlier days - and I've always liked drivers that can come in to a new formula and be instantly fast.

also lap records are are also affected by changes in regulations and technology / tyre wars - just the same as any other form of motorsport - so often you aren't comparing like as like. e.g. don't they all run smaller carburettors since the demise of Formula Super A?

[BootsOntheSide]

Very good post regarding the problems with F3000 there sonic - hoepfully GP2 can put these things right in terms of car design and racing regulations.

However, personally I think running the races alongside F1 is a mistake, as it gives them too little track time - once you factor in the fact that the teams run on very low budgets, rookies really struggle to make an impact.

[raul_iulian]

Originally posted by Kirk
lucky indeed.

Lucky right!

[Snrub]

Regarding the young "hot shots", the only recent one who it seemed to work out for was Kimi. He still had much to learn his first year, but he was a reasonable choice. Guys like Sato and Button while impressive, clearly needed to learn more. Wouldn't it make sense to sign young drivers (eg. a manufacturer's program) and develop them through F3000? When they're ready they're already signed and can be brought to F1.

Originally posted by sonic
The power to grip ratio was too different from modern F1 - F3 cars, whilst slower, were much more akin to F1 handling characteristics i.e. nible, light with tons of grip. F3000 is more like Champ car.

That's the opposite of CC. CC is more about power compared to F1 which is more about handling. I see what you're saying though, Altantics is like that to CC. For the record, until a couple years ago CC had similar levels of HP (now they've got a lot of torque) to F1, and a few years before that they had more HP - infact substantially more.