A Tale of Four Sebastians

Confirming its strange fetish for drivers named Sebastian/Sebastien, rumor has it that Scuderia Toro Rosso, the Red Bull-owned second string F1 team, is considering putting World Rally Champion Sebastien Loeb (left) in a Formula 1 car for the final Grand Prix of the year. OK, now try to follow along...last year Sebastian Vettel partnered Sebastien Bourdais on the Toro Rosso team. Vettel did so well (actually winning a race for the small team) that he was promoted to the better-funded Red Bull Racing team for 2009. Toro Rosso decided to replace Vettel with Sebastian Buemi for 2009. Buemi has proceeded to embarrass Bourdais so far in 2009, so as of this week, Toro Rosso fired him. (He is threatening to sue, but that's a different story). For the next couple of races, Toro Rosso has confirmed that Spaniard Jaime Alguesauri will take the race seat. However, there is talk that once Loeb is done with his rally commitments for the year that he will take over from Alguersauri. This will return Toro Rosso to an all Sebastian line-up.

Frankly, I'd love to see Loeb in an F1 car...he's an amazing rally driver and did a great job in a test earlier in the year. It's always interesting to see someone try to cross over from another series. Let's hope that Loeb can do better than other recent transplants.

FIA...worth reading to the end

If you have been following the sorry saga that is the FIA/FOTA/Formula One mess, then I don't blame you for not wanting to read more about it. If you are not familiar with what's going on, just imagine an episode of any soap opera, throw in hundreds of millions of dollars, and season with a cast of egomaniacal characters with complete disregard for the fans who love the sport.

Anyway, the latest is that Ari Vatanen may run against Max Moseley for FIA president, which would be a welcome change. It won't do much to sort out the existing fracas. However, maybe Ari, a true racer (former world rally champion) with political skills (elected to the European Parliament from two different countries...how'd he do that?) can keep a better perspective on what motorsports is all about and avoid messes like this in the future.

Anyway, I said this post would be worth reading to the end. In doing a little research about Ari on the intertubes yesterday, I found this award winning video of him from the mid-eighties driving a Peugeot 406 T16 up Pikes Peak. Awesome stuff.