"Toro Rosso was created to give young drivers a chance. Alguersuari and Buemi had it for three years and after this time it's possible to evaluate a driver's development.
We haven't seen in them any possibility of growth. Both are worthy of grand prix racing, but for us that's not enough: we need winners."
So says Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko who was speaking to the Italian newspaper the Gazetto della sport, and I’ve rather handily stolen the quote from the autosport website.
Well I still feel as if both Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi have been unfairly treated after being replaced by Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne, although having said that Buemi appears to have landed on his feet by securing a Red Bull third driver role.
This leaves me feeling pretty aggrieved for Alguersuari whom in my eyes at least, and certainly in many other fans and critics eyes when you look at driver top tens, was one of the more competent drivers on display last year.
Marko is right that they’ve had their fair share of time to prove their potential, but I would say after a slow start, they both were producing storming drives in the latter half of 2011.
He says Toro Rosso was to give young drivers a chance, and yes they’ve had their chance but it seems contradictory to then take that chance away from two still very young drivers when they were both looked like they were about to produce the goods.
To get rid of one would make more sense, rather than both of them. In fact I think it would have made a good reference point for one of the two replacements at Toro Rosso.
Alguersuari particularly has grown exponentially over his time in Formula 1. We must not forget that he was thrown into Formula 1 halfway through the 2009 season while still driving in the World Series by Nissan championship.
2010 was something of a disappointment scoring only five points despite a number of strong qualifying performances, but there were signs he was a good driver. Those signs increased in 2011, qualifying may not have been especially strong, but his drives from the back of the pack were frequently brilliant showing increased maturity as well as speed.
Canada and Italy showed he could play the long game and make strategy work for him as he came from the back of the grid, while the stronger qualifying performances which ended up with good results such as Korea and India showed he could mix with the higher midfield.
It has recently been reported that he has turned down an opportunity to race with HRT in a Spanish, ‘super’, team as he thought it would be a step back.
It could be argued it’s better to keep racing, but then it hasn’t done fellow Toro Rosso refugee Vitantonio Liuzzi any favours in getting him back to the front. So perhaps he has made a wise decision, it increasingly looks as though Alguersuari will have to take a year on the side lines.
With Pedro de la Roso having left his McLaren third driver role to join HRT, there may well be an opportunity at the Woking team.
In any case, he finds himself unfairly without a drive, having been dropped after being told he was part of their plans leaving him with little chance of securing a competitive drive. But this is the world of Formula 1, life is tough, but hopefully this won’t be the last opportunity for Jaime Alguersuari, with pay drivers on the increase, his is a talent that deserves to be on the grid.
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