Perhaps the worst-kept secret in F1 this season (apart from Alonso’s move to Ferrari) has been that Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hülkenberg will be driving for Williams in 2010. Today it was finally announced.

Historically, Williams has been a team that has been all too happy to dispense with even their best drivers. The fact that they held on to Nico Rosberg for four seasons is possibly a sign that they have learnt their lesson — that exchanging World Champions for the likes of Heinz-Harald Frentzen or Ralf Schumacher is not a championship-winning approach.

Nevertheless, Joe Saward has speculated that Williams are not too jazzed about Nico Rosberg, which is why they have no problems letting him go (presumably to Brawn). This is strange if you ask me, because 2009 has been the season when I was finally convinced that Nico Rosberg has some talent. In my mid-season review I ranked Rosberg in 5th, and I doubt he’ll be much lower in my end-of-season rankings.

But the decision to partner their protégé Nico Hülkenberg, who Williams have been grooming for the past few years, with Rubens Barrichello looks like a very mature move. I would say that this partnership is possibly stronger than any they have had since the mid-1990s.

For a few years now, Nico Hülkenberg has been a youngster to watch. He exploded into the international motorsport scene when he dominated the 2006–2007 A1GP season. He attended all but one event for A1 Team Germany and scored 14 podiums out of 20 starts, effectively clinching the title for Germany. (I wonder if he ever received his prize money for that season…)

He then spent two seasons in Formula 3 Euroseries. He finished 3rd in his first season. But although he clinched the title in his second attempt, I would have argued that he did not need another F3 season to justify a presence in GP2.

When he finally made the step to GP2, he impressively won the title at his first attempt. In the process, he beat several more experienced drivers including two who have already made the move to F1 — Romain Grosjean and Kamui Kobayashi.

We have seen too many times that success in lower formulae is no guarantee of success in F1. No Formula 3000 Champion ever went on to become an F1 champion (although Lewis Hamilton did become a GP2 Champion on his way to F1). I do, however, feel that Hülkenberg is a seriously exciting talent.

By pairing him up with Rubens Barrichello, Williams have ensured that he will have every opportunity to succeed. In essence, they have given this hugely promising rookie the best mentor in the world in the shape of the most experienced F1 driver of all time, Rubens Barrichello.

It is no secret that Jenson Button owed a lot to Barrichello’s set-up data this season. The Brazilian’s experience makes him an expert at setting up the car. He can now pass his wisdom on to a true rookie — one who will surely truly appreciate the help.

I am sure it is help that Barrichello will be more than happy to provide. He is clearly a nice guy. And in the knowledge that he is in his final year or two of F1, helping cultivate a new talent may well appeal to him. It is, after all, what his former team-mate Michael Schumacher did with Felipe Massa.

In my review of the European Grand Prix, I didn’t mention Luca Badoer, who made his high-profile Ferrari début at the race. It was always going to be a tough ask, because the odds were so heavily stacked against him.

For one thing, he had to get used to the car, which he had never driven at racing speeds before. According to Ted Kravitz:

Evidently the Ferrari F60 is a very complicated car to operate. There are many buttons and dials to turn and twist: Kers harvest and usage settings, brake balance and bias levers, fuel and oil pumps, front flap adjusts and the usual revs, throttle and mixture settings.

I’m not sure if he is implying that the F60 is more difficult to get used to than other current F1 cars. But whatever, it is certainly new territory for Badoer who is used to driving cars in the relatively tranquil environment of the test session rather than the intense spotlight and razzmatazz of a grand prix weekend. To deal with all of this in the first time he’s properly driven the F60 — and in his first race for ten years at that — is undeniably a big ask.

Luca Badoer must have been as shocked as everyone else when it was announced that he was to race in Valencia. It is typical of Badoer’s luck. F1 has shat on this driver for his whole career. I would highly recommend his biography on F1 Rejects for a full overview.

He may not be F1 championship material. But he is the 1992 Formula 3000 champion, having beaten Rubens Barrichello, Olivier Panis and David Coulthard among others in the process. So he is no fool.

But in F1 he never got the proper chance to demonstrate his abilities, being stuck with back-of-the-grid teams Scuderia Italia, Minardi and Forti — and despite usually having the upper-hand over his team mates on the racetrack, politics often meant he found it difficult to move ahead in his career.

You might have thought that signing with Ferrari to become their test driver in 1998 would have seen an upswing in his fortunes. In a lot of ways, Badoer must be the unsung hero of Ferrari’s success since then. He is the test driver who has helped develop cars capable of winning Championship after Championship following a twenty year drought for Ferrari.

Normally a team’s test driver would be the first choice to step in if a driver needs replaced. Inexplicably, when Michael Schumacher broke his legs in 1999, Ferrari opted to look outside the team. They placed Mika Salo in the car, when most observers expected Badoer to get the nod. Subsequently, Badoer stayed on with Ferrari having been promised that he would be the reserve driver.

Since then, Ferrari has had a remarkable period of driver stability. Between 1999 and 2009, Ferrari changed drivers only three times (Irvine replaced by Barrichello, Barrichello replaced by Massa and Schumacher replaced by Räikkönen)! At no point did any driver have to be replaced at short notice. No space for Badoer ever emerged. One must imagine that after twelve years waiting, he would have given up believing.

Then Felipe Massa was injured at Hungary. In the year that there was a radical change in technical regulations which is said to be the biggest in 25 years. In the year that testing is banned. In the one year that Luca Badoer had never driven the Ferrari car. And when the next race was at a brand new circuit which he had never visited.

Of course Luca Badoer didn’t get the call. Michael Schumacher did instead, and the media could barely contain their excitement. Schumacher is a seven times World Champion, but still people openly wondered: is Schumacher up to the task? Can he get used to the new car? Is he fit enough? At 40, will he be too old? In the end, it turned out that Schumacher couldn’t do the job because of the injury he picked up while racing Superbikes in Germany.

So it was down to Badoer to shoulder the responsibility of making something out of the pickle that Ferrari found themselves in. Of course, the media won’t be lining up with the same excuses that were already being served up on Schumacher’s behalf before his comeback. This was despite the fact that there are actually quite legitimate reasons for Badoer to be off the pace. Badoer is not much younger than Schumacher, and is the oldest driver on the grid. But that is not an excuse apparently, despite the fact that it supposedly would have been for Schumacher.

Instead, the media has spent its time openly laughing at Luca Badoer, almost willing him to do badly. The schadenfreude soaked through the reports as the journalists gleefully reported Badoer’s four pitlane speeding offences on Friday, a symptom of the fact that the pitlane speed limit is substantially higher during test sessions and Badoer needed time to adjust to the new braking points required.

All I can say is, Badoer is not the one who parked his car at Rascasse, but never mind. Of course, the journalists were just taking it out on Badoer because he isn’t Princess Schumacher so they lost their “fairytale” story that is so desperately needed to sell a turgid circuit like Valencia.

I found the gulf in opinion between the journalists and the drivers very interesting. While the journalists were busy thinking up oh-so-witty nicknames like “Look-how Bad-you-are”, the drivers in contrast felt sorry for the situation that Badoer found himself in. Jarno Trulli described Badoer’s situation as “impossible”. Lewis Hamilton said that Badoer has “done a good job just to keep it on the track”, while Kovalainen shrugged: “I don’t know what else you could have expected.”

The split was also demonstrated on the Chequered Flag podcast. David Croft mocked, “even Yuji Ide had more promise” (which is totally untrue — Badoer has already achieved much more in his career than Ide could ever hope for). F1 Racing’s Bradley Lord said, “Badoer approached this race as a test — and he failed this one.” Ha-very-ha. Anthony Davidson had plead to his bloodthirsty journalist colleagues, “give him some space!”

David Coulthard summed up the situation nicely: “Who would be Luca Badoer? You wait 10 years for your chance to race for Ferrari and then, despite having no preparation whatsoever, you get slated for not being Michael Schumacher.”

In Checkpoint 10’s excellent analysis, it is shown that Badoer was not actually half as bad as the journalists would have you believe. His qualifying time was 103.4% of the fastest time, when the 107% rule used to eliminate drivers on a regular basis.

He struggled during the race. After a good start, he was obviously spooked by being surrounded by other cars on lap 1 and spun. He then panicked in the pitlane, seemingly allowing Romain Grosjean to overtake him before he crossed the white line. And he had a worryingly erratic second stint. But overall, Badoer showed improvement as the race progressed, and noticeably caught up with Räikkönen’s pace as the race progressed and Badoer became more comfortable.

In sum, yes, Badoer had a very disappointing weekend. But that is mostly because driving standards are so high these days. You don’t have to go far to find real joke drivers who definitely did not deserve to be racing and did a much worse job than Badoer.

I grew up watching people people who paid to get a race seat trundle around up to a dozen seconds per lap off the pace. Hell, you only have to go back a few years to encounter and Yuji Ide, who suffered the ignominy of being stripped of his super license. The last pay driver went when Sakon Yamamoto lost his seat. Driving standards all the way through the grid are very high compared with ten or even five years ago. This amplifies Badoer’s rustiness.

Badoer’s performance in Valencia is the sort of thing that would have been commonplace at the back of the grid in the mid-1990s. You might say that this is not the mid-1990s, but when you consider everything that is stacked against Luca Badoer — his age, his lack of experience, never having driven the F60 before, never having been to the Valencia Street Circuit before, and having to get used to the modern-day race weekend environment — I think he should be cut a bit more slack.

I feel very sorry for Badoer, who has had a very tough F1 career where he has been given the rough end of the stick at almost every turn. It looks likely that Badoer will be replaced come Monza, which would be fair enough if he doesn’t show a perceptible improvement in Spa.

But now Badoer will probably be remembered for these two difficult races where he was thrown in at the deep end, and everyone decided to point and laugh at this man (who, do not forget, is actually putting his life on the line when he goes out to race). I am not sure whether this is better than being remembered for breaking down in tears at his previous European Grand Prix, in 1999.

Over the past couple of days, Vitantonio Liuzzi has re-emerged into the consciousness of this F1 fan. He remains in his role as test driver for Force India. But apparently it’s an “open secret” that the Italian has a contract to race for the team in 2010 and 2011.

I, for one, applaud this news. I have always been perplexed by the way Liuzzi was sidelined and shunned by all teams. That goes especially for Force India, who have possibly the two most easily-dropped drivers on the grid.

Giancarlo Fisichella — never the most exciting of drivers — is well into the waning phase of his career. Meanwhile, Adrian Sutil has precious little to show for his two full seasons, besides a one-off good run in Monaco which he partially attained by illegally overtaking under yellow flags. The only way you could construct a rustier partnership with current F1 drivers would be if you paired Rubens Barrichello with Nelsinho Piquet.

But why Liuzzi?, I hear you ask. Quite simply, he hasn’t had a proper chance to demonstrate his considerable talent in F1.

I say considerable talent, because that is what he has. Look back at the 2004 Formula 3000 season. Liuzzi was not only the last-ever F3000 Champion. He utterly dominated the field.

Granted, the field wasn’t the most exciting. The only other drivers to win a race that season were Enrico Toccacelo (whose career path fell off the edge of a cliff after that season), and Robert Doornbos and Patrick Friesacher, both of whom got a drive in F1 with disappointing results.

But someone who wins seven out of ten races and finishes second in two of the others in one of the most important feeder formulae needs to be seriously talented. Indeed, at one point he was supposedly destined for a role at Ferrari.

Unfortunately for him, he ended up getting tied up in the overly political world of the Red Bull driver development programme. In his first season as a Red Bull F1 driver, he was forced to share the seat with Christian Klien (another person whose career was left on the scrapheap). Even then, it was not exactly a fair share. He ended up racing just four times, as the Red Bull management clocked that having two drivers with limited experience was not as good as having one driver with solid experience.

For 2006, Liuzzi was offloaded to Toro Rosso where he partnered Scott Speed. It was the first year of the team’s existence, and an outdated and (deliberately) underpowered Cosworth engine did not help matters.

2007 should have been better, and things did begin to look up towards the end of the season. If we believe what we read, the atmosphere within the team was very political, and neither driver saw eye-to-eye with the management. Scott Speed left the team after allegedly being physically assaulted by team boss Franz Tost. After that, Speed came out and said that Franz Tost and Gerhard Berger were “pushing like hell to get rid of me and Tonio.”

Nonetheless, Liuzzi, unlike Speed, saw out the season. He was partnered by a certain young Sebastian Vettel. Today people note what Vettel has gone on to achieve, and how Liuzzi’s performances in the same car show the Italian in a more favourable light — as the Grandprix.com article highlights. This is perhaps slightly unfair. Vettel’s F1 career was just a few races old. By the end of 2007, Liuzzi had 39 races under his belt.

Nonetheless, you cannot avoid the fact that Liuzzi has not yet had a fair crack of the whip. He has never had decent machinery, nor has he ever had a favourable political environment to let him get on with the job.

Now his relatively large amount of experience would make him an ideal candidate for an F1 drive. This is especially the case now that (thanks to the ever-ingenious Max Mosley and the FIA) young drivers can’t get enough testing mileage to get proper experience before being thrown in at the deep end.

Tonio Liuzzi has played a canny move by taking part in the Speedcar series. Apparently his performances have turned heads. It certainly ensures that he won’t get race rusty.

I, for one, hope he makes it back into F1, if only for him to get a proper chance to show what he’s made of. A race seat at Force India is not exactly the Ferrari that seemed to be his destiny four or five years ago. It’s the least he deserves.

Another thing I haven’t got round to writing about yet is the climax of the GP2 season which happened in Monza.

As it was, Giorgio “Pants” Pantano took the championship with a sprint race to spare. He had a commanding lead in the championship for a long time running up to Monza, so that was no real surprise. However, in the feature race he managed to underline why he finds it so difficult to find an F1 drive.

What should have been a relaxed cruise to a vaguely good result from pole position (he only needed to come 3rd) was made a lot more touch-and-go when he made a silly mistake coming out of the pitlane. He crossed the white line — and not by a little bit. Astonishingly, almost half of his car was over the white line. For a driver with that amount of experience, that is simply unforgivable. Pantano has had 78 GP2 starts plus 34 Formula 3000 starts in addition to his 14 F1 starts.

Getting such a silly drive-through penalty in such a high-profile situation was unlikely to endear himself to many F1 teams. Ian Phillips, who worked with Pantano at Jordan, was speaking on Radio 5 Live over the course of the Italian Grand Prix weekend. He was pretty disparaging about Pantano, saying he never saw what was so great about him and that none of the teams are particularly interested in him.

Earlier in the season Pantano seemed quite optimistic about his chances of getting an F1 drive for next season. But his demeanour after the GP2 feature race in Italy spelled it out — he’s going nowhere. After four wasted years in GP2, Pantano looks set to head to the States to try and carve out a career for himself over there.

The demeanour of Bruno Senna could hardly be more different. Despite losing out to the GP2 championship, he looked happy, relaxed and confident. He says he has spoken to most of the F1 teams except for Ferrari and he is almost a certainty to be in F1 in the near future.

Whether he is ready to get a drive for next year is uncertain. Despite a few strong performances early on in the season, he tailed off a bit towards the end and does not quite look like the complete package yet. Although he was strongly linked to a race seat at Toro Rosso for next season, Red Bull’s people appear to prefer Sébastien Buemi and it looks increasingly likely that Senna will be unable to find a seat for next year. In fairness, another year in GP2 would probably do Senna a lot of good.

Coming third in the championship was Lucas Di Grassi. This is a rather impressive driver who managed to come close to the top of the table despite having missed the first three events (worth a potential 60 points)!

I am not so sure that Di Grassi is quite ready for F1 yet. He doesn’t really stand out on the race track, but he certainly gets the results. He already has very strong ties with the Renault F1 team as a result of his participation in the Renault Driver Development programme. He is already a Renault test driver, so could be a very good shout as a replacement for Nelsinho Piquet.

Another Renault Development Driver is Romain Grosjean. He was pre-season favourite to take the title, having dominated the GP2 Asia series last winter. But he waned in the main GP2 series and could only finish fourth. Grosjean looks like a potentially exciting talent for the future, but he needs to clean up his act a bit before he can be seriously considered for F1. He is in danger of becoming known for his overly-aggressive moves and he has picked up one or two penalties as a result of his ham-fisted defending.

In fact, the person who looks most likely to get a seat in F1 next season is the aforementioned Red Bull protégé, Sébastien Buemi. He only finished sixth in the GP2 championship, behind Pastor Maldonado. Buemi has shone once or twice this season, most notably in the French sprint race. However, for much of the season he has been rather anonymous, collecting plenty of points but with relatively little fanfare.

Whatever, the people at Red Bull clearly feel that they have got a good return on their investment so far and look set to put him into a Toro Rosso seat for next season. Is it wise for Toro Rosso to select Buemi over Senna? I’m not so sure. I feel that both could do with an extra year in GP2. And both have undoubtedly shown flashes of talent. But Bruno Senna feels like the more complete driver so far.

Given the marketing value of the Senna name, it would be a bit of a surprise if Buemi gets an F1 seat and Senna doesn’t. At least I suppose it would show that F1 isn’t all about money. Not quite yet.

I will turn my attention to the Italian and Belgian Grands Prix later this week. But over the past couple of days a lot more information has come out on the new Formula Two series. It has got me thinking.

I was one of many who was really sceptical about the Formula Two idea when it was first announced by Max Mosley. It was clearly a move in the strategic political wrangling between Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone — just another Max Mosley vanity project.

The FIA’s insistence that a Formula Two car would only cost around €250,000 seemed infeasibly optimistic. But the plans look a lot more solid now that it has been announced that the cars will be supplied by Jonathan Palmer’s MotorSport Vision company. The cars will be designed by WilliamsF1 (yes, that WilliamsF1), and the engines will be turbocharged 1.8 litre Audis. Although it is not yet clear who will manufacture the chassis, the firm aim is to keep costs to below $350,000 (at current exchange rates, very close to the original target).

MotorSport Vision will also own the commercial rights to the series. MSV knows its stuff as it already owns the commercial rights in addition to being the promoter and organiser of British Superbikes. The FIA hasn’t chosen a bunch of dummies to run Formula Two.

Initial reports seemed to be written on the assumption that Formula Two would replace the already established Formula Palmer Audi. However, according to Grandprix.com, Jonathan Palmer is still committed to expanding Formula Palmer Audi in addition to Formula Two.

Meanwhile, GP2 — clearly the most well-established second-tier motor racing category in Europe — will continue unaffected. GP2 already has the F1 support slot, so Formula Two will instead support the World Touring Car Championship with a possibility of supporting some races in the Le Mans Series and DTM, with a few standalone races chucked in for good measure.

This news surrounding Formula Two does make me wonder though. Are there now too many lower-category racing series?

For all the doom and gloom about costs in Formula 1, motor racing as a whole appears to be booming. In recent years a handful of series with big ambitions have all been set up. I can’t think of any that have disappeared to make way for them. These new series are all more or less competing with each other, finding more and more ludicrous “unique selling points” in order to justify their existence.

Just last month Superleague Formula held its first race. Superleague is probably the strangest of the lot. Each car represents a football team. The cars’ liveries are based on the football club’s colours. Instead of drivers and teams scoring points on the racetrack, football teams do. Huh?!

It’s not an original idea. A few years ago someone else came up with Premier 1 Grand Prix which was fundamentally the same idea. But that never came off the ground. In fairness to Superleague, they have at least got their championship going. There are also some impressively big names involved. There are some cute associations too. For instance, the AS Roma car is run by the Fisichella Motor Sport team — Giancarlo Fisichella being a Roma supporter.

However, I doubt what Superleague can really achieve. It lacks a really, really big name like Manchester United. Grandprix.com has also been disparaging about the quality of the drivers involved. The most famous driver in the field is the embarrassed F1 reject Antônio Pizzonia who will race for Corinthians when it doesn’t clash with his glittering career in Stock Car Brasil.

The chance for any crossover appeal is surely also limited. A mickey mouse series like this certainly won’t get my interested in football. And I have spoken to a friend of mine who is an avid Glasgow Rangers supporter who is just perplexed by the whole idea. He only cars about Rangers winning on the football pitch, not on the racetrack.

Another relatively new series along similar lines is A1 Grand Prix. It might have a name like that cowboy plumber’s firm, but A1GP markets itself as the “World Cup of Motorsport”. Again, teams and drivers don’t score points. Instead, nations do.

Like Superleague, the driving standard does not seem too high. The only drivers to have made the leap from A1GP to F1 in the past are Scott Speed and Nelsinho Piquet. It’s not exactly the champions’ hall of fame.

At first I thought A1GP was a silly concept, and I still think in many ways it is. But to its credit, whenever I have caught highlights of the races it has looked pretty exciting. The series seems to grow more and more every year. For the coming season they have pulled off a major coup by clinching a deal with Ferrari to supply chassis and engines. A1GP has made a big name for itself in the space a few years and looks set to stay.

Increasingly, Formula 1 drivers are emerging from the World Series by Renault. Its first incarnation was as a relatively modest series centred in Spain. Over the years it has grown and grown until it has become a convincingly European series. Part of the prize of winning the championship is to have a test drive with the Renault F1 team. Six of its nine champions have also had careers in F1, sometimes in the following year. Heikki Kovalainen and Robert Kubica have been two notable beneficiaries of the Renault F1 test.

GP2 is also a relatively new series, although it was built on the foundations of Formula 3000 and has and advantage because it is essentially Bernie Ecclestone’s pet project. This means that all of the races have a ready-made audience in an F1 support slot. The racing is great and plenty of promising drivers have come through the ranks including Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton and Timo Glock.

Rumour has it that next year will see the inception of GP3. The series is said to be a re-branding of International Formula Master, which currently supports the FIA World Touring Car Championship. Formula Master was itself only invented in 2007 and was envisaged as a competitor to Formula 3.

GP3 even has a logo that looks very similar to the GP2 logo. It seems a foregone conclusion that any GP3 Series would run as a Formula 1 support event.

The Formula 1 package is already pretty full up, never mind motor racing as a whole. In addition to Formula 1 and GP2, the Porsche Supercup is a well-established part of the F1 weekend. However, as a supercar race as part of a package of open-wheel racing, it sticks out like a sore thumb. If any series gets the heave-ho for GP3 (which you imagine would have to happen), it is surely the Porsche Supercup.

It’s worth remembering that F1 already had a new support series in 2007. Formula BMW Europe has supported several F1 races this year. This series is yet another new invention, although it is a merger of Formula BMW UK and Formula BMW ADAC. Now instead of being an entry-level series with cars tootling around small national circuits, Formula BMW Europe is now an impressive international series that is held on Formula 1 circuits.

If this all comes together, Bernie Ecclestone would have quite an interesting little portfolio. Formula 1, GP2, GP3 and Formula BMW Europe. Those are four pretty distinctive categories with a clear hierarchy. Makes you wonder — maybe it is only a matter of time until Formula BMW Europe is rebranded as GP4.

With so many lower-level series now, I can’t help but wonder if it’s all a bit much. Are there really enough credible drivers to keep so many high-profile international series going? What is the unique selling point of each of these series?

I thought Formula Two would never be able to carve itself a niche. But the FIA has already come up with a pretty good justification of its existence:

The objective is to make top-level international single-seater racing available to drivers who at present have difficulty in raising enough money to demonstrate their talent… [C]ompetitors from countries which do not yet have an established motor racing structure will find it easier to progress.

The FIA will also award Super Licenses to drivers competing in the Formula Two championship. If the FIA decides to stop awarding Super Licenses to GP2 drivers, they could well successfully swipe the rug from underneath GP2’s and Bernie Ecclestone’s feet. Whatever, I find it difficult to believe that there is space for quite this many “second tier” series.

Update: I don’t believe it! I have just written this post and I have already learnt about yet another new racing series called A2GP, with A3GP possibly also in the pipeline. I mean really!