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For any racing team, the drivers are its face and as Vijay Mallya announced in a glitzy event held in Mumbai on the 12th of January, the drivers for Force India:

1. The former Renault driver, Giancarlo Fisichella who has 12 years of F1 experience and has driven for Minardi, Jordan, Benetton, Sauber and Renault.

2. With him is the up-and-coming German Adrian Sutil who is just in his second year in F1.

Both have pretty good things to boast about in their resumes and that’s what got them the heavily contested (and well paid) driving spot for the Force India F1 team. Fisichella has won 3 races in his career, and is an experienced driver, but he was always overshadowed by Alonso when driving for Renault. Adrian Sutil claimed his first championship point in the Japanese Grand Prix of 2006 driving for the Spyker F1 team. For Fisichella, this is his chance to make a name for himself and be the no.1 driver in the Force India team.

The 28-year-old Vitantonio Liuzzi who has 3 years of experience in F1 and was earlier associated with Red Bull and Toro Ross, is the test and reserve driver. The other Test-Drivers are R Rodriguez, G van der Garde.

Though the team is at the tail end at least at the moment, driving it’s car still is fun. The Ferrari Engines must surely be capable of delivering some serious Horse Power. But it needs to be controlled and used well with a good chasis design and some inspired driving.

Pros like Michael Schumacher, Kimi, Alonso etc make racing an F1 car look easy but easy is the one thing racing an F1 car isn’t; There’s under steer, over steer and then there are the bumps which are the ones that are the toughest to deal with.
The next time you watch an F1 race, note especially the strain each corner puts on their necks, you have to be super fit to take all this. Also, note that this is just a simulation but the drivers still experience the ‘G’ forces sidewards and backwards & forwards, it’s no joke to be a good F1 driver. Still the cars touch 300 kph routinely and what wouldn’t we give to be in the drivers place man?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-3Eu0LKXXg

It is a bit disappointing that the Force India F1 team will not have an Indian driver at the wheel at least not in 2008. One India driver — Karun Chandok, winner of Formula Asia V6 and currently driver for Durango Corse team in the GP2 series according to the Wikipedia page on him is being touted as a probable choice for 2009 but for now, we Indian F1 fans have to be contented with Giancarlo and Adrian driving for our team.

The wild speculation regarding the driver’s choice which included names like Ralf Schumacher and jacques villeneuve, only ended when Dr. Mallya announced the choice of drivers. His words were frosty about the reason for the choice:

“The engineering team needs to benefit from the drivers. We had to choose the driver to fit the purpose. No Indian driver did,”

But maybe he just buckled under the pressure from the engineering guys in the team or the FIA or whatever. The team should have maybe given Narain Karthikeyan a drive if only just for sentimental and patriotic reasons and for the added publicity. One would imagine that if he {Narain} was good enough to drive for Eddie Jordan’s {Former World Champ} team then he was certainly good enough to drive as a second fiddle to the other guy that may have been chosen. Poor old Narain Karthikeyan has disappeared all together from the news lately. Actually not all together, he can be seen driving around with Dhoni to Manali and Jaipur in the Speed Petrol T.V advert but that’s a different matter now isn’t it.

At the end of the day, to be successful in professional racing, each member of a team must contribute — giving his 100% be it the pit mechanics, the guys who sit on the pit wall monitoring stats on everything going on, team boses, anybody though it is a different matter that for the fans, the most important of all are the drivers. The best example perhaps is Michael Schumacher who was the most important driver and face of Ferrari in the recent decade or maybe all of Ferrari’s history. Coming back to Force India, in my view Force India has had the luck to get pretty good drivers. These guys can at least drive around an F1 car lap after lap and favorably move out of the way when the blue flags are waved …

Technorati Tags: force india, drivers, fisichella, sutil, f1

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