Stuck Isn’t Stuck on Heidfeld

We must be a little hard up for news during this summer break and so anyone is fair game for an interview including Hans-Joachim Stuck, a famous German driver who contested grands prix in the 70s and now heads up Volkswagen’s racing division. Stuck has a great idea, dump Heidfeld and sign Alonso to a long term deal. Now, I’ve never hidden my dislike for Alonso’s attitude toward the teams he has been on, but hear me when I say I agree that he’s a terrific driver. However, Fernando Alonso isn’t the savior for everyone and I’m sure I’ll get struck by lightning for that one. We know that by his short but chaotic visit to McLaren and his desire to be the clear number one driver on the team and win at all cost.

Again, I’m not writing breaking news, but for a team to acquire Alonso, they must be prepared for his demands as they are non negotiable in his mind. On that note, Robert Kubica is poised to be and may already be one of the great F1 drivers (give him a f2008 or MP4-23 and we will see) and that doesn’t bode well for having Alonso as team mate. Mario Theissen would have his hands full with quite possibly a scaled down version of what happened at McLaren and I say scaled down only because Theissen and Kubica aren’t as ‘loud’ as Lewis Hamilton and Ron Denis were.

I think it’s very important for Theissen to do his best to re sign Robert Kubica for a few more years assuming that within that time BMW-Sauber will be able to give him a legitimate title contending car. Kubica isn’t a commodity to waste but relegating him to second driver to Alonso would see Kubica wasted and on his way probably to a strong competing team. Even as it stands now with the good possibility that Heidfeld and Kubica will be the BMW-Sauber drivers in 2009, changing attitude just to have Alonso on board would be a disruption to a team as well oiled and streamlined as BMW-Sauber strive to be.

My other point is about Nick Heidfeld. Nick is a much better driver than he has shown this year and in the last few races has turned his season around. His issue as we know has been his inability to get tire temperature up enough in the f1.08 for a great flying lap in qualifying. Once in a race having to start at mid pack, Heidfeld slowly works his way up where he really should have started. We have seen some tremendous driving from Nick this season and his point total is certainly worth mentioning. In Hungary, a block prevented Nick from a much better qualifying effort and a car that wouldn’t have beaten a grocery cart stopped both drivers from achieving any sort of respectable finish whatsoever.

There is one notable driver on the grid that is now having the same tire warming issues Heidfeld has struggled with and maybe you know him, Kimi Raikkonen the reigning champion. Yes, Kimi is having the same tire temperature issues that plagued Heidfeld and we can plainly see how badly this affects his race.

So, again, it must be a very slow time for F1 news for stories like this to make the wires.