F1 » Barrichello Indy-pendent in 2009?

Just a small point, and not really related to the topic, but does anyone else get the impression that Crash reporters don''t seem to just report facts any more, and tend to add pointless comments/their own often worthless opinions into their articles? For example "it''s hard to accept that Barrichello is a senior driver"
In what possible way is it hard to accept that fact?????
Nearly 36yrs old
Driven for four different teams over 15 years
Won 9 races, 13 poles, 16 fastest laps etc etc.
Pretty senior if you ask me.

Why all the hype around Marco Andretti? He's certainly not developed enough for F1 next season. For me Graham Rahal is the next US hope, he still only 19 and was impressive in Champcar, and just won his first Indycar race.

It may be that the news is just a press release from Honda or from the US where Barrichello is an unknown.

I cannot believe that Marco Andretti would go to F1 next year - he struggles in Indycar - he would totally out of his depth in F1 - like his dad Michael was in a Mclaren in 1993.

Got to agree with Max - Rahal is far more mature - other than Champcar he's raced in A1GP as well

Wouldn't be surprised to see Reubens strike out for new pastures, but I'll miss him - he has always come across I feel a a genuinely decent guy.

Might be some weight to this rumour. Of course, it came from BILD which is the biggest bull**** paper in the world.

Rubens is extremely good mates with T Kan though...

Marco only has 2 retirements in the first 3 races. He finished 2nd in Homestead. And second Scott Speed should not have ever had the opportunity to represent the US driver in F1. He was horrible and furthermore most of America didn''t know who he was anyway. And it shows that he blows as a driver saying that he is only in the third tier of NASCAR instead of in the top tier. I think Marco is a much better driver than Scott Speed will ever be.

It would be interesting to see how Marco would do without being on his fathers team. Something you have to give credit to Rahal for. It would also be intesting to see if Marco took F1 more seriously than his father by actually moving to Europe instead of flying in from the US for the races.

While I am no fan of Scott Speed the nascar comparison is not the best gauge. Just look at the difficulties other open wheel drivers such as Franchitti, Villinueve, Pruett, AJ Almondinger,... have had.

I don't think we ever got to see if Scott Speed was good or not. That car was absolutely horrible. I would also add that Speed TV showed a breakdown of driving statistics when Scott Speed was booted and he had clearly outperformed Liuzzi in every category.

Looks like the topic sort of deviated from it's original post but just to add my opinion I believe that a good US driver for F1 and bring the interest of the country to F1 would be Danica Patrik, Marco or Rahal Jr in that order...
Danica you all could say has not proven herself in road tracks but we forget that in the Indy series the cars do not have all the servo assistance as the F1 cars have and hence I believe she would do very well in Europe/F1 plus bring the US media and interest to the sport.

What happened to the days where old F1 drivers were still considered competitive race drivers? Remember when Mansell was called into Williams in '94 after retiring from F1? He was still a race winner. Too bad his career ended like it did with the disasterous McLaren of 1995.