Joining the 200 Club

While Rubens Barrichello basks in the glow of perceivably having broken the all time Formula 1 career starts record held by Ricardo Patrese: 256 (1977-93) Another driver is set to join the very exclusive club of drivers to have made 200 Grand Prix starts, as Giancarlo Fisichella will add his name to the growing list this weekend in Monaco.

“Fishy-fella” will honour the accomplishment by donning a special set of overalls and special liveried “200”logo helmet, as the 35-year-old Roman said in a recent statement;

“I still feel young, I still feel happy to work in F1, to be an F1 driver."

"The only problem is traveling around the world all the time! But apart from that, I still enjoy F1. I wouldn't still be here if I didn't," Fisichella added.

Here’s a quickly compiled listing of the various drivers to accomplish the rare feat of showing up for 200 Grand Prix’s…

200 Grand Prix Starts Club
Driver Races Starts Active Years
1. Ricardo Patrese; 257, 256, 1977-93
2. Michael Schumacher; 250, 249, 1991-2006
3. Michel Alboreto; 215, 194, 1981-94
4. Andrea de Cesaris; 214, 208, 1980-94
5. Gerhard Berger; 210, 210, 1984-97
6. Nelson Piquet; 207, 204, 1978-91
7. Jean Alesi; 202, 201, 1989-2001
8. Alain Prost; 202, 199, 1980-91, 1993


Active Drivers
Driver Starts Year Debut GP
1. Rubens Barrichello; 256, 1993; South African GP
2. David coulthard; 234, 1994; Spanish GP
3. Giancarlo Fisichella; 200, 1996; Australian GP
4. Jarno Trulli; 187, 199;7 Australian GP
5. Jenson Button; 141, 2000; Australian GP
6. Nick Heidfeld; 138, 2000; Australian GP

Force India VJM01

Talk about making a statement by having a Formula 1 chassis named after yourself, which is exactly what Indian billionaire tycoon Vijay Mallya has done upon launching the newly christened 2008 Force India challenger. But hey, when you’re putting up a budget of $120 million, I suppose you can name your car whatever you feel like, eh?

The car is a heavily revised Spyker F8VII chassis that Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyn and his staff have brought up to 2008 regulations. The VJM01 debuted its new team livery during its glitzy launch, which was held on February 6th in Mumbai, India…

May the Force be with you

For those of you potentially pondering why there are so few stories currently in the Force India F1 category of the F1 Team Links section, this is due to the fact that the team was sold and re-branded at the end of the 2007 season.

Of course the team has gone thru a litany of owners the past few seasons since being sold by Eddie Jordan. EJ sold Jordan Grand Prix in the winter of 2004 to Alex Shnaider.

The team continued under the Jordan Grand Prix banner for one final season in 2005, becoming the (Midland) MF1 Racing team in 2006, before being re-sold at the end of 2006 and becoming known as Spyker F1. Yet with the help of some creative accounting exploits by the Spyker car concern, the team was once again sold off to Indian Tycoon Vijay Malia and the Dutch Mol family. Hopefully the team will now stabilize for the foreseeable future with the advent of the upcoming inaugural Indian Grand Prix.

To read further stories about Force India, see: Spyker Sold and then click on the Spyker F1 label at the bottom of the post.

The (NOT SO) Magnificent Seven

Prior to the just completed Holidazes… Force India, one of the two remaining Formula 1 teams to finalize their 2008 Driver line-ups was holding a shoot-out in Jerez, Spain.

Taking part in this Jack Roush “Gong Show” style runoff were a cadre of F1 pilots currently out of work: Giancarlo Fisichella, Christian Klien, Viantonnio Luzzi, Frank Montagny and Ralf Schumacher. This quintuplet of ex-Formula 1 racers were joined by the team’s test drivers Roldan Rodriguez and Giedo van der Garde during a four day test.

Previous speculation suggested that the two drivers fighting for the second seat were “Fishy-Fella” and Luzzi, with Italian newspapers suggesting that Fisichella had been given the nod. Yet, it would seem wiser to take the younger and hence hungrier Luzzi, as Fishy-Fella is a bit long in the tooth by F1 standards…

India Forcing its way into F1

Not surprisingly the World Motor Sport Council has approved Spyker F1’s name change to Force India F1 for the 2008 season. Thus allowing Indian co-owner Vijay Mallya to capitalize upon future marketing opportunities.

Its worth noting that Mallya is the head of India’s two Grand Prix organizations which the FIA has forced to merge together by the end of this December in order to hopefully smooth the way towards seeing the scheduled 2009 Indian GP take place.

Mallya has installed a former United Breweries executive at Spyker to monitor the teams finances with T.V. Lakshmi Kanthan being appointed after spending 23 years with UB, while currently serving as UB’s British Finance Director.

And surprisingly Toyota’s Jarno Trulli is expected to be one of the four drivers testing in November for Force India’s second seat. This despite Trulli reportedly having inked a further one year contract with Toyota, while his more expensive teammate Ralfanso (R. Schumacher) seems to have the inside track to the seat while Sakon Yamamoto and Vitantonnio Luzzi will also take part in the shoot out…

Spyker scores first point

As the various members of the International BAR Association (Nee, Lawyers; or as Marc of FT fondly refer’s to them as Shyster’s) stay increasingly busy shuffling between multiple cases being heard by the FIA Appeals courts, another has failed.

With Scuderia Toro Rosso’s appeal of Vitantonnio Luzzi’s 25 second penalty for passing Adrian Sutil under a yellow flag in the Japanese GP being dismissed. With the court in question rejecting STR’s argument, thus Sutil’s single point for 8th place stands. This means that Spyker F1 has broken its Duc and now all eleven Constructors’ have garnered World Championship points this season.