Dixon so far/Dixon injured in Japan IRL crash.

[DriverT]

Any progress with the test? Is it continuing on Monday?

[Raven]

Nope that's it for Scott. It's all over. He'll be packing his bags and be on the plane to Motegi soon, which is where he's racing this weekend.

When Montoya leaves, Williams is going to want someone with as much talent to replace him. That's why Bruno Junqueira will get the call.

[marcus]

I think he has done very well.

he has managed to achieve success in everything he has driven , from Formula Vee , Formula ford and at the age of 15 or 16 was driving a Formula Holden and holding his own against the top boys.
impressed in indy lights and made the move to CART and won races and then into the Indycar series and won the championship , now he is doing very well in his first few drives of an F1 car.

the guy is awesome and deserves a shot in my opinion.

Go Scotty go !!!!!

[oziengineer]

He's a brilliant driver, and he should definitely sign on to williams. But, Williams need Webber as well.

[Matthopps]

I think Dixon has done himself no harm at all; he's clearly very talented and a good racer, I'd love to see Jeff Gordon in the Williams as well, thus making next years choices, DC (for the experience), Gordon, Dixon and Webber (though he is contracted to Jaguar-which must have some value).

[105octane]

I feel Dixon will end up test driver in his first year in F1. Hes good but no Montoya, there are better candidates around at present to fill the seats.

[DieRitter]

I think the test was good. We will know if Frank is definitely interested when he gives SD a new opportunity.

[Testure]

His mum says that he was a bit disappointed with how things went: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sports/spo...ection=general I'm not sure if I was expecting too much from Scott, but I don't believe he did enough in terms of lap times to really grab the team's attention. Even considering some bad weather and some tech problems, he basically had four full days in the car yet (IMHO) didn't stand out from the crowd around him.

Still, from the quotes I've read, his biggest advantage appears to be that he was very professional in his approach. That's worth a lot in F1 these days. Perhaps a testing role would be a good fit.

[Armco Bender]

I don't believe he did enough in terms of lap times to really grab the team's attention.

Shows how mature he is,it was raining,he didnt go like a silly bugger and try to impress everyone and stuff the car into the armco.He's got the job,Ralf can see the writing on the wall thats why he's bailing....

[Chappelli]

I agree with Raven, Bruno is the man for Williams..He's the super young hot shot and CART is such a competitive championship and given his record of dominating it for the last couple of seasons, I think he's a shoe in... oh, it's a series that's practically dead? Oh, he didn't win the Championship... riggght... ummm.... okay.... oh, and he's 27-ish......

I think the Williams decision all boils down to two issues
1) Politics.. it's the unmeasurable, very few people know what's happening behind the doors, who would have picked Wilson getting dumped before Redbu... sorry Kleins talent knocked on the door (and I think the young fulla is doing a great job). I'm not knocking Klein for having corporate backing, after all that's almost as important as being a fast driver.

2) Maturity; we've all read the articles where Lauda (as much as I think he's a complete plonker) and legions of others bag 99% of current F1 drivers. The calls to ban electronics to bring the 'driver' back in to F1. My opinion is, you put a good driver in to a Williams and your gonna have X result, when Salo took over from Schumacher, yes there was a drop off in pace, but he wasn't THAT far off the pace and he was replacing a GREAT driver.

[DieRitter]

Funny enough, many people at Williams prefered Junqueira over Button few years ago... but for political and marketing reasons, Jenson was chosen. Not taking anything from Jenson... pace wise he was up there with Bruno!

I still think that Pizzonia will get the seat and Piquet Jr or Rosberg will get the testing role... But we need to see how they will do this year in F3.

Piquet had the same amount of tests and was quicker than Scott... He was also driving the "old" FW25.

The team, however, evaluates a number of things like... time to get familiar with the car and also the hability to work in the setup... Could be that Scott scored some valuable points with Frank.

Da Matta and Montoya, got their F1 seats much more because of their Cart reputation than the times they set during f1 tests.

[DieRitter]

Originally posted by Chappelli
1) Politics.. it's the unmeasurable, very few people know what's happening behind the doors, who would have picked Wilson getting dumped before Redbu... sorry Kleins talent knocked on the door (and I think the young fulla is doing a great job). I'm not knocking Klein for having corporate backing, after all that's almost as important as being a fast driver.

There will be always politics... but don't think we can compare Williams with Jaguar.

[Sirio]

Scott comments on his F1 test in Barcelona for Williams BMW

First of all the trip started like a nightmare. We were to fly from Indy to Chicago, Milan, then on to Barcelona. The Indy flight was delayed and they thought we could not make the connection. So we decided to take the 3:30 drive to Chicago. I was not happy! We then learned on the way that the international flight from Chicago had been delayed by 4 hours. We still continued to Chicago, the delay was good as the traffic was a nightmare. So we eventually were on our way to Milan. About 5 hrs into the flight and half way over the Atlantic the plane had a mechanical. So they decided to turn around and go back to Boston? I was ****ed. I could not believe it. Got into Boston at 4:30am. They told us that the flight would leave again that night at 6:30pm. But I decided not with us - It was a **** airline and I was surprised it even made it off the ground. OK, so Ashley and I decided to take a direct flight from NY to Barcelona. Yeah, why didn't we do this to start with? We flew from Boston to NY with no problems. We got the connection to Barcelona. I could not believe that we might make it this time. We did, YEAH!

The test went well. The first day was good. Just getting to know the circuit was a big challenge. Barcelona was a much more technical track than Paul Ricard. We had a lower revving engine for the first day. We put in a good time compared to the current test driver Gene. His fastest time was done with a better engine and softer compound tyres. We were about 4 tenths off his time with the same tyres. The team said that the engine was about 3 tenths. So this was good and we were to get the better engine the next day.

Day 2 started bad. The weather was very bad. I don't think I have seen that much rain since I had been back in New Zealand! From the start of the day to the end it did not let up. Did a lot of durability running for the team. They had some new gearbox and cooling items. Ralph was the other driver for the last two days of the test. It was hard to tell how we did on times. As we only had a few sets of wet tyres and most others had more sets. The wets were like the dry tyres in that they are very good for the first lap. I was over the rain quickly and wanted a dry track.

Day 3 looked to be good. The weather was clear in the morning and we had the better engine and more sets of tyres. The morning went well and we completed a lot of laps. Just trying some different setup changes to get a feel for the car. Just before lunch we put on a new set of tyres and set out to start to get some times in for the afternoon. Coming out of turn 8 on the first lap the drive shaft broke and then destroyed the right rear of the car. This took the afternoon to fix. The car was ready again at 5:45pm. By this time the weather had turned bad and rained again. I went out on full wets and did 8 laps. This finished the three-day test.

I was disappointed with the last two days. Didn't feel I accomplished much for myself. Just wished that the weather was better and we had a chance to put some good times on the board. Very happy with the team as they were very professional and it was great to be a part of the test. I look forward to having another go.

SD

[Sirio]

I found the aboveon the New Zealand Motorsport site.
He seems to have some good reasons for being slower than the other BMW drivers but my gut feeling is that he has not done quite enough to get a race drive as there are other drivers waiting in the wings that could also do a very good job for Frank and Co

[Sirio]

Here is a video from NZ tv news that shows how whenever a Kiwi does something the NZ reporters must ask the most famous person in the area if they have heard of the New Zealander.

http://www.xtra.co.nz/broadband/0,,1...248958,00.html

[chunterer]

He did a very sensible job at both tests. He;s right in that the weather's hampered him but then it's no bad thing to get some wet weather mileage in is it?

Why not done enough to get a drive then? in dry he's pretty much on pace of regular drivers, both of whom have millions more miles experience of the cars and team and circuit!!

I think he's got high standards and was secretly hoping (like any self respecting driver does) that he'd blow the doors off the other Williams guys! I also think he's been quite modest too, not a bad thing.

After all this effort from both parties, i'd be a touch surprised if he doesn't get a full time race seat (if deal hasn't already been done anyway!?)

Surely there'll be another run later in the season and then loadsa miles in off season.

Someone made point about breaking Greg Moore's record of youngest CART winner. Scott is very much like Greg Moore in style and maturity for his age?

[spider]

He has won a major and highly competitive championship and was quick in CART - no-one has answered my question of: what engine did he have in CART? Some people have said he was average in CART, but as you say Chunterer he is CARTs youngest ever winner, plus Pacwest were in financial dismay when he was with them - hardly a perfect environment. He drives with speed and maturity in IRL and he appears very complete mentally for a 23 year old.

Everyone who's done motorsport, I for example race karts, know that it's far easier to get close to your experienced team-mate in the DRY than the wet - thus his performance in the wet was mature and with experience he'll become acclimatised to the cars handling characteristics in the not-so-grippy conditions.

I believe he's done a sterling job. My sources informed me that Williams were not impressed at all with Piquet in early tests, they were more impressed with Rosberg...

Dixon though has had praise for his 'potential' from Frank - coming from the top, it can't be better than that...

[chunterer]

Spider,

Sorry mate Scott had a Cosworth engine in the Reynard when he won his 'youngest' CART race in 2000. I thought it was a Merc/Ilmor but Bruce McCaw has lost that engine deal at end of '99 i think.

This was before they ran out of money and Toyota stepped in to 'place' him at Ganassi for the rest of the year.

Forgive me if i've got the years wrong, i've been trying to count back. Some kinda short term memory loss!

IRL CHAMP 2003, CART 2000-2002?

Did he win IRL at his first attempt then?!!!!

[spider]

Cheers Chunterer! Yep, 't was at his first attempt - not bad goin' that is it!!?? Especially against the Penske boys...!

[DieRitter]

Originally posted by spider

I believe he's done a sterling job. My sources informed me that Williams were not impressed at all with Piquet in early tests, they were more impressed with Rosberg...

Times for Barcelona - DRY

FW25 during the winter

Piquet 1m15s809
Rosberg 1m16s491

FW26

Gené 1m15s211
Dixon 1m15s922

Maybe the FW26 is slower than the FW25, or the warm weather doesn't suit the new michelins... or F3 is better than IRL... who knows? All we know is that when evaluating new drivers, the team always follows the same procedures.

As I said... if he's to get the seat, it won't be because of his test pace, but because of his racing career in IRL and Cart.

[tanalised]

Originally posted by chunterer
Spider,

Sorry mate Scott had a Cosworth engine in the Reynard when he won his 'youngest' CART race in 2000. I thought it was a Merc/Ilmor but Bruce McCaw has lost that engine deal at end of '99 i think.

This was before they ran out of money and Toyota stepped in to 'place' him at Ganassi for the rest of the year.

Forgive me if i've got the years wrong, i've been trying to count back. Some kinda short term memory loss!

IRL CHAMP 2003, CART 2000-2002?

Did he win IRL at his first attempt then?!!!!

It was a Toyota. He also ran the most laps of anyone that year in Champcar, demonstrating his maturity and ability in bringing home an obviously underfunded car. By contast his teamgate Mo Gugelmin was a disaster

[Kicking-back]

Originally posted by DieRitter
Times for Barcelona - DRY

FW25 during the winter

Piquet 1m15s809
Rosberg 1m16s491

FW26

Gené 1m15s211
Dixon 1m15s922

Maybe the FW26 is slower than the FW25, or the warm weather doesn't suit the new michelins... or F3 is better than IRL... who knows? All we know is that when evaluating new drivers, the team always follows the same procedures.

As I said... if he's to get the seat, it won't be because of his test pace, but because of his racing career in IRL and Cart.

Winter testing times are usually quicker at Barcelona than times set during the season.

[BootsOntheSide]

Scott only did 2 years in ChampCars - 2001 and 2002, and both were in Toyota engines. To be honest, when I saw Spider's original question, I thought it was a rhetorical thing, an attempt to suggest that he is more likely to get the Toyota drive.

[Super Tourer]

Dixon has crashed in practice for the IRL race in Japan on the Montegi track. Initial reports say he has suffered a hairline fracture to his left ankle.

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=20524

[Adam43]

Pants. Let's hope it doesn't get in the way of anything.