by Yannick » 31 Mar 2009, 21:12
The question of who would be my favourite F1 Reject Driver is a difficult one, because when I visited Spa in 92 and 93 and Hungaroring in 95, I've seen so many of them racing in their prime.
I was still a teenager, when I saw qualifying for the Imola GP of 1994, but a regular reader of an Austrian F1 journal. Oh my, how I cried when Roland Ratzenberger died. It's making me sad again already. Luckily for me, I didn't watch the race, but went with my family to the boring birthday celebrations of a distant relative, because you all know what happened on the Sunday (RIP)
Anyway, my first memories of watching F1 on TV are from the 80s, usually Monaco, with my family, but I don't remember any drivers. Then, the TV rights went to a satellite station, and my parents didn't have satellite TV. We visited my aunt who did receive the station on the day of the 1991 Imola GP, and I was impressed by Eric Van De Poele's performance. He really would have deserved to get out of prequalifying that day.
He was very kind when I talked to him at Spa '92, having sneaked into the paddock on Thursday without a ticket, and signed an autograph. So I guess he's my favourite F1 Reject driver.
It certainly cannot be Jean-Christophe Bouillion, whose performance at Hungaroring in 95 was quite shocking to me, having been a regular Sauber supporter. It was the year that Sauber had the Ford works engine deal and they absolutely went nowhere. They were just like Jaguar that year really.
And it's hard not to name Perry McCarthy my favourite F1 Reject driver, because I was sitting at Eau Rouge on Friday afternoon, Spa 92, awaiting his arrival, knowing in advance he wouldn't come around too often. When he did, it looked kind of unimpressive from the outside because he slowed down coming up the slope, and the engine wasn't roaring at full blast. Only when I read his profile on this site, I realized the kind of precarious trouble he must have been in in that exact same moment.
Moreno in the sister car came around a little more often. So I guess Andrea Moda qualifies as my favourite F1 Reject Team.
Taki Inoue, on the other hand, is somebody who was just an extremely unlucky fella. I could have seen his legendary accident in Hungary 95 from the point where I was sitting, but didn't because at the moment, I looked elsewhere, as the front of the field was passing by my location. I didn't find out until later that he was hurt.
Super Aguri, with their overenthusiastic name, had always been a team that had "eligible to the site" written on them right from the start, having been formed at the last minute only to give the reigning Reject Of the Year a new cockpit. I was so happy when they scored their first points - and at Barcelona, the world's most overtested track at that!
Still, the historical significance of having seen Perry McCarthy drive his black Andrea Moda around Spa makes them my favourite Reject Team.
“Mexico City is a better place to hold the (Mexican GP) than Cancun,” said Ecclestone. “In more or less any city around the world you could ask people ‘where is Mexico City?’ and they would say ‘Mexico’.”