A week ago Christian Horner visited the Swiss Servus-tv's F1-program and confirmed once again, that Kimi Räikkönen is not an option for Red Bull next season. In the program viewers voted for their most favorite driver alongside Sebastian Vettel. Mark Webber got 26,2 % of the votes. Räikkönen came in second with 26,1 % whereas Lewis Hamilton was third with 17,4 % and Jenson Button fourth with 16,4 %.
– Kimi is a good driver but I believe that F1 is in the past life for Kimi. He drives rally and as I have heard he is also interested in Nascar and is not coming back to F1-tracks, Horner said in the show.
Webber rebelled a bit against Horner's order at the end of Sunday's race, however he didn't do anything that would have upset the team harmony. As far as I know, Red Bull would at some stage had carried out a survey concerning Räikkönen's availability if Webber should decide to quit.
Let's take a peek into the driver market for next season. Already at this point it looks certain that it will be quite quiet in the transfer stock market.
No changes are happening in the four biggest teams if Webber still continues in the champion team. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will stay at McLaren and Ferrari has confirmed that Felipe Massa will still continue driving alongside Fernando Alonso.
Since these top teams have no seats to offer, Nico Rosberg will stay at Mercedes and he has earned a remarkable raise in his salary with his good grips, since so far he has drove in the team with the 7 million euros that Button turned down when choosing McLaren instead.
It's practically certain that also Michael Schumacher will continue at Mercedes because only he can decide if he wants to continue or not. His motivation has to be strained with all his crashes and car with no victories though.
Renault will probably change at least one of the drivers. Robert Kubica will try to get back to the team already at the end of this season, but after that the situation is completely open. Vitali Petrov has beaten Nick Heidfeld and will most probably continue in the team for the third year.
Williams has already made their choices of drivers. Rubens Barrichello stated so openly that he wants to continue and would be ready to sign a contract immediately, that the British team will hold up their decision for a longer time so they could get the Brazilian to take a little back from the salary he has demanded.
Pastor Maldonado has an option with Williams and he assured in Silverstone that he isn't looking at other options.
Sauber is building their next season with Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez. Kobayashi has assured the circles so well, that several teams are following his development very. Perez again is a student from Ferrari's academy and he is a qualified option to take Massa's place in year 2013 for example.
From Force India we can expect that Nico Hülkenberg will replace Adrian Sutil. Since Schumacher continues at Mercedes, Paul di Resta will stay in the Indian team that uses Mercedes-engines.
The other driver at Toro Rosso will also change. Based upon the endseason's performances, either Sebastien Buemi or Jaime Alguersuari will keep their seat. They get Daniel Ricciardo from Hispania as their team mate.
Lotus will get a new African sponsor before Germany GP, which enables the team to choose their drivers based upon their esperience and skills instead of sponsor money. Therefore it looks certain that Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli will continue.
Virgin is the best Timo Glock can find but Jerome d’Ambrosio is standing in line to Renault.
Hispania-team has once again changed the owner. Jose Ramon Carabante and his family have vanished from the scenes and the racing team is now built by a small investing company called Theran Capital. In Hispania the winds of changes are blowing. The new owner has got himself one of Honda's Brackley-factories and is moving the team to England.
Theran Capital is looking for Spanish forces to replace team manager Colin Kolles. At this point the driver-matters aren't important but they are predicting in general that Spain's Dani Clos, who is doing well in GP2-races, is a strong contender for Hispania in 2012.
Turun Sanomat, Silverstone
HEIKKI KULTA
Courtesy: Nicole
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