Vijay Mallya expected to announce Force India’s drivers line-up officially in the next few days
Force India’s boss Vijay Mallya is expected to reveal Force India’s official drivers’ line-up in the coming few days. According to some reports, Adrian Sutil will keep his seat for another year while Tonio Liuzzi’s drive is at stake despite the fact that
he has a two year contract with the team which is expected to expire at the end of 2011.
It is expected that Force India’s test driver Paul di Resta will take Liuzzi’s place as Force India’s full season driver. Other than that, Nico Hulkenberg is expected to be their test driver.
However, the team has not stated anything about these rumours. But if the team decides to get rid of Tonio Liuzzi, they will either have to buy Liuzzi out of his contract or prove that the contract had the legal right to break it if they included such a
clause in his contract that is.
It would be quite disappointing to see a driver like Nico Hulkenberg drive as a test driver for a team like Force India which is a middle running team. Nico has been the most impressive rookie of the 2011 Formula 1 season as he scored a pole position at
a dry qualifying session in Brazil at the legendary Interlagos circuit.
On top of that, his pole position time was almost a second faster than the rest of the drivers. Since Williams was not as strong as the top running cars in 2010, this was quite an impressive performance by the young German. Unfortunately, he was released
from the team after the team chose Pastor Maldonado over him. It is believed that the team chose him mainly because of the fact that Pastor was bringing a major sponsor from PDVSA.
Nevertheless, let’s hope that Force India does not choose money over talent and make the right decision for the 2011 Formula 1 season.
“There are some legal loose ends to be tied up in the next few days,” Vijay Mallya told the media recently.
Force India has definitely proved that they have the ability to challenge teams like Williams and Sauber. The team is hoping for much better results next season and it would be interesting to see how they use KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) and movable
rear wings in their cars.
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