News and Notes, July 17

It has been a busy week in rumourmongerland with some interesting rumours, silly rumours and actual signings taking place as the silly season heats up.

We will start with an actual signing in F1, as one of the dominoes falls into place, and this one will come as no surprise to anyone who follows F1, and that is of course the announcement that Sebastien Vettel has signed to race for Red Bull racing starting next year, replacing the retiring David Coulthard. This has been one of the worst kept secrets on Formula One recently as it was obvious to anyone that Vettel would be a Red Bull driver next year, even before Coulthard announced his retirement. This should come as no surprise to anyone, seeing as Vettel is obviously extremely talented, and has been a Red Bull protege for a long time. The Vettel signing leads to the next obvious question, who will replace him at Toro Rosso next year? Gerhard Berger has already said that it is likely to be a rookie driver. The Obvious candidate has to be Bruno Senna who is doing very well in GP@ this year, is only 24, and oh yeah, he has that name. I am sure that Mr. E is salivating at the prospect of having a formula one series with names like Rosberg, Piquet, and Senna racing, although there is very little prospect of the Mansell name re-appearing it seems as the Mansell boys are not doing very well in Formula Atlantics, and at this point if you are struggling in that series your chances of making it big anywhere in open wheelers is pretty much shot. The other rumour, which in my mind seems rather silly, is a rumour that Giorgio Pantano will replace Sebastien Bourdais and partner Senna at Toro Rosso. Bourdais has not been bad in F1 this year, but he has been beaten rather badly by Vettel, who is tipped as the next German superstar by none other than Michael Schumacher. Pantano is leading the GP2 championship, but his first go at Formula One with Jordan in 2004 was a bust and he is 28, which is old in Formula One years. I have yet to be convinced as to why this is a realistic possibility, but I could be proven wrong.

Farther up the grid some interesting rumours are starting to come out as to who will partner Lewis Hamilton next year at McLaren. Current McLaren man Heikki Kovalainen has been blown out of the weeds by Hamilton most of the year and ROn Dennis has made it no secret that he wants Nico Rosberg in the seat and the Mercedes-Benz folk want someone a little more German than Kovalainen, although many people forget that Rosberg is actually German. Rosberg has a contract with Williams through 2009 and Sir Frank Williams has publicly stated that Rosberg ain't going anywhere. On the other side Rosberg has publicly said that contracts don't mean a whole lot and that he wants to go to Macca as it would obviously be his best chance at winning races. This promises to end messily with either a fistfight between Ron Dennis and Patrick Head (which I would pay big money to see), or a protracted legal battle that will end at the mysterious contract recongition board. If McLaren do manage to poach Rosberg from Williams then it would probably cost them a ton of money in compensation and would make them look very bad indeed. Stay tuned for this one as it promises to get really interesting.

Finally another tidbit of information, the on and off again NASCAR racer and ex world champion Jacques Villeneuve will be back in the cockpit of one of those beasts at the Nationwide series event in Montreal. This will obviously help marketing the event, but knowing Jacques' F1 record at his home track, I don't expect much to be honest.