Grand Prix Rejects

Just thought of this little game we could play. If you could ask any racing driver, past or present from any former or current series one question about their career then what would it be?

For me I’d ask Paul Tracy how on earth he didn’t get sacked from Team Green after what he did at Houston in 1998.

I'd love to chat to Kobayashi about his career, getting the podium at Suzuka, and the crazy shenanigans of being a crowdfunded driver at Caterham in 2014. The inside details on Caterham that year would be more than worth it - though I can imagine if Beyond the Grid spoke to him they'd ask "what was it like driving alongside Lewis Hamilton?"

I'd like to talk with Rio Haryanto and ask him what F1 was like from his perspective, and if it bugged him that FOM purposefully stopped him from winning Driver of the Day 12 times. I would then try to convince him to take F1 to court for not giving him Driver of the Day 12 times.

Though to be honest, more than anything I'd love to just sit down with Jacques Villeneuve at a pub and listen to him shittalk every single driver other than himself, past present and future

I'd love to ask Pedro Diniz what it was like at Arrows with the WDC as his teammate and how things unfolded when the car was pretty mediocre. And if he has more time, I'd love to know exactly how and why the Diniz family left Forti after a year, how that year went, how good he thinks Moreno still was... And what's true about the 1999 Ferrari rumors!

There are plenty of things I'd love to get clarification on, but chief among all: "so, Jean-Denis, what were you doing?"

I'd love to have a pint with Tora Takagi. No conversation, not that it would be possible given our combined linguistic skills, just two fellas bonding over a love of pints.

I'd probably ask Roberto Moreno: Of the many terrible cars you somehow managed to drag onto the grid, which was actually the worst?

I'd sacrifice myself for the greater good and ask Ukyo Katayama which team he was in contact with for 1995. I will either be disappointed or brag that my left-field McLaren theory was right all along.

I would ask one of several female racers if they would like to marry me.



On a more serious note, I would ask Esteban Tuero why he quit F1 at the start of 1999, despite Minardi expecting his return for his second year in the sport. I would also ask a follow-up question, asking if he had any regrets about that decision.

Tuero is a very good shout actually - one of the unsolved mysteries of F1!

I'd love to chat with Nico Rosberg, Toto Wolff and any Merc personnel and get a straight answer one day as to what the unspecified "foreign substance" was at Singapore in 2014.

Well, rather obviously I'd quite like to kick back with Deletraz Sr and ask what, exactly, he thought he was doing?

Beyond that, I'd ask Montoya about his, ahem, "tennis injury"

CoopsII wrote:Beyond that, I'd ask Montoya about his, ahem, "tennis injury"

My uncle was a McLaren engineer at the time, and he explained that, in typical McLaren fashion at the time, the truth was really rather boring: apparently he was doing motorbike racing when he shouldn't have been according to his contract, so both sides agreed to call it a tennis injury (for his embarrassment probably ). That's the very basics of it at least.

CoopsII wrote:Well, rather obviously I'd quite like to kick back with Deletraz Sr and ask what, exactly, he thought he was doing?

Beyond that, I'd ask Montoya about his, ahem, "tennis injury"

I can answer these:

1. THAT WASN'T DÉLÉTRAZ It was Montermini running out of fuel! Just an innocent case of Murray being Murray.

2. As Rob alludes, it was a motocross accident. He actually cleared that up himself in his interview with Tom Clarkson on Beyond the Grid a couple of years back.

Bobby Doorknobs wrote:

CoopsII wrote:Well, rather obviously I'd quite like to kick back with Deletraz Sr and ask what, exactly, he thought he was doing?

Beyond that, I'd ask Montoya about his, ahem, "tennis injury"

I can answer these:

1. THAT WASN'T DÉLÉTRAZ It was Montermini running out of fuel! Just an innocent case of Murray being Murray.

2. As Rob alludes, it was a motocross accident. He actually cleared that up himself in his interview with Tom Clarkson on Beyond the Grid a couple of years back.

Yeah i remember that podcast of Montoya’s quite well. Apparently he was on a 4 wheel quad bike as opposed to the regular 2 wheelers. I was more surprised about his pretty glowing appreciation for the Schumacher bros in that podcast given the animosity between them at that time.

I’d love to speak to #LordMahaveer about THAT parking disaster at Baku a couple of years ago.

Bobby Doorknobs wrote:1. THAT WASN'T DÉLÉTRAZ It was Montermini running out of fuel! Just an innocent case of Murray being Murray.

2. As Rob alludes, it was a motocross accident. He actually cleared that up himself in his interview with Tom Clarkson on Beyond the Grid a couple of years back.

Well that's depressingly boring