Which team will be the worthiest replacement for Minardi?

[Jax Humanhater]

Well, Minardi has been the breeding ground of race winners, champions, and pay drivers. I think their exit is one of the worst occurences in F1.

For the least-performing teams, filling Minardi's shoes is a huge fit.

EDIT - My poll went wrong. Ignore the poll and simply specify your opinion.

 

[Dmitry Zaharov]

Why only 2 options?

 

[Hampus Andersson]

I think Sauber is today´s Minardi in terms of getting new solid talent in.

Apart from the two obvious ones, Vettel and Hamilton which Mclaren and Red Bull took under their wing we have seen Sauber giving a ride to guys like Kimi Raikkonen, Kamui Kobayashi, Sergio Perez, Esteban Gutierrez, Felipe Massa, Robert Kubica (BMW Sauber),

Vettel even got his first drive in F1 in a BMW Sauber. And Timo Glock as test driver.

Many guys as you see.

 

[GAIAjohan]

HRT only has a crap driver and an experienced driver who has to give input about the car. I don't see any driver development in there.. Well, maybe except for Ricciardo who drove a couple of races. But the team has restructured..

Marussia is the same boat. One experienced Glock and an inexperienced and not too high-profile paydriver like Pic

Caterham tries hard but nothin comes out of that. Caterham is more like a bad Toyota or Jaguar racing. They take one or two experienced and pretty good drivers (Kovalainen and Trulli), and one of them leaves, they replace it with some bog-standard driver (Da Matta/Petrov)

 

[Ho3n3r]

Sorry I voted HRT before I read your post. I thought you meant 'team that will never get anywhere, as Minardi did'.

In this regard definitely Sauber, although they've also had the tendency to hire past-their-best drivers, like Alesi, Villeneuve, Frentzen, etc.

 

[Luka Kerin]

Based on the evolution of ownership Toro Rosso is the new Minardi.

Seems most the top flight teams harbor some kind of driver development program through a lesser team, it win-win. Top teams can assess drivers without gambling their own teams championship position and the lesser team no doubt gets a kick back from technology sharing.

Redbull ==> Toro Rosso
Ferrari ==> Sauber
Mercedes ==> Force India
Mclaren ==> spoilt pubesent boys from local go kart clubs

 

[Markus Neumann]

There is no real replacement for Minardi. HRT is too cash-strapped and on top of that on the way to become a purely Spanish team. Caterham is not cash-strapped enough and can afford to have proper drivers. That leaves Virgin, but with Timo Glock they already have one seat taken. And neither Di Grassi nor D'Ambrosio are particularly great drivers and Pic also seems only average. And TR, Sauber and FI are not really comparable to Minardi.
The days of unprofessional F1 teams are over, HRT just doesn't know it yet.

 

[Chris Jenkins]

Vettel even got his first drive in F1 in a BMW Sauber.

True, but Sauber has previous association with Red Bull and Vettel was firmly under Red Bull's wing (pardon the pun) before Vettel made it into F1, so I would hazard a guess that Red Bull's sponsorship with Sauber had a lot to do with Vettel's involvement in the team.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

True, but Sauber has previous association with Red Bull and Vettel was firmly under Red Bull's wing (pardon the pun) before Vettel made it into F1, so I would hazard a guess that Red Bull's sponsorship with Sauber had a lot to do with Vettel's involvement in the team.

But BMW owned the team in late late 2005 so i think it had to do with him possibly winning the Formula BMW.

BMW knew what a talent Sebastian was, he won the Formula BMW season for example so they hired him as a third driver for the 2006 season.

Remember that Red Bull debuted in Toro Rosso in 2006. Naturally that would be the place for him if it really was Red Bull calling the shots.
I think that BMW simply "stole" him for a year then when the contract was up he could move to Toro Rosso mid-season.

 

[Jax Humanhater]

It seems like a handful of those eight voters did not read my edited post when I said to completely disregard the poll because I screwed it all up.

Where did I go wrong? :/

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Fixed it, removed the poll