Hungarian Grand Prix: Jaime Alguersuari suffers one minor glitch on F1 practice debut

Date published : 24 Jul 2009 - 13:45:21

The 19-year-old, who will become the youngest driver ever to compete in a grand prix at the Hungaroring on Sunday, awoke to a mountain of negative headlines on Friday morning.

It is understood the Spaniard was advised by his press officer at Toro Rosso to avoid the coverage at all costs, particularly the back page lead in one British newspaper asking: 'Is this the most dangerous man in F1?'

The question had to be asked after high profile drivers such as Felipe Massa, Jenson Button, Mark Webber and Lewis Hamilton had all questioned the wisdom of giving the novice a drive after only two straight-line tests in a F1 car.

Alguersuari, though, remained cool in the 30C heat, managing 42 laps in Friday's first practice session as he and Toro Rosso team-mate Sebastien Buemi had the track to themselves for much of the first 40 minutes.

And although the Spaniard was the slowest driver on track by the end of the session, there was just 0.230s between him and Buemi in 19th and 20th places.

Earlier, Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost, the man who had plucked Alguersuari from World Series by Renault and handed him his opportunity, defended his decision.

"We expect him to be fast," Tost said. "We expect him to be a very measured and highly-skilled driver. When Red Bull and respectively Dietrich Mateschitz decided to run a second team, one of the main targets was to give the young drivers, especially from the Red Bull young driver programme, the chance to come into F1.

"And, when we decided to change the driver a couple of weeks ago, we studied all the data of the young Red Bull drivers and the result was that Jaime was the most experienced, the most successful and the most measured drivers.

"And therefore we decided to run him. I am convinced that he will come up with a good performance and that he will be successful."

When asked how much longer he would remain with the team, Tost said: "It is a very easy question. That is a decision of his right foot. The faster he is, the longer he will be in the car with us. And let me tell you it this way – he will be educated at Toro Rosso and then he goes to Red Bull Racing because this is the target.

"I just want to add that I hear some people say he is not experienced enough. It is always a difficult question to answer about when is a driver experienced enough to come into F1. I can only say that Jaime has done so far 118 races. He won 17 races; he was 46 times on the podium.

"He won last year the British Formula 3 championship, and this year in the World Series he is improving his performance race by race. Last weekend at Le Mans he finished on Saturday fourth and then on Sunday he was on the podium in third position. It is quite a good basis to come into F1.

"Apart from this, as you know, the new regulations mean there is no testing any more because of financial reasons, and therefore it is not easy to bring in the new drivers into F1. You have to start them here, and I think he has a good background and he is experienced enough to do a good job."