Andretti to enter F1 in two years
Honda has twice, very carefully, released news about Marco Andretti on Friday evenings, a time when there is guaranteed to be much less coverage because journalists have gone home for the weekend and by the time they return on Monday the news will be old hat. The only possible explanation for this is that Honda is trying to minimize the coverage the tests get. And one must therefore ask why this is a good plan as most F1 teams spend their time trying to get maximum coverage for everything (positive) that they do.
The clandestine nature of the announcement suggests, therefore, that there is more to this than meets the eye – and the presence of Mario Andretti would seem to underline that.
Not many F1 test drivers bring their grandfathers to their tests.
The fact that this is a second test is also significant, as it proves the point that the first test was not just a one-off publicity stunt. Honda must therefore be seriously considering doing something with Marco in the future. Testing time these days is a very valuable commodity and you do not just give it away.
It is clear that Andretti is exactly what F1 and indeed Honda, needs in America. F1 will never strike it big in the United States without a local hero winning races to get the locals excited. One needs only to look at the effect that Fernando Alonso's success has had on F1 in Spain or think back to similar phenomena in Germany in the mid 1990s with Michael Schumacher and in Britain in the mid 1980s with Nigel Mansell. More at Grandprix.com
12/13/06 Marco Andretti has set a timetable of two years to enter F1. "Formula One is a big dream of mine," the young Andretti told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. "To win the world championship is the thing I desire the most.
"In a perfect world, with the last two years of my contract with Dad, I would like to win the Indy 500 and then come to Europe."
He's going to have to run GP2 or Champ Car first because the mostly oval IRL series isn't going to give him the requisite training he needs in the cut throat world of F1. Success in the IRL will not be a measure of his skill and he risks a huge failure if he thinks he can go to F1 and compete with the likes of Alonso, Raikkonen, Button, Massa, and the rest of the front-runners. With that said, if he does well the Andretti name will do wonders for F1's popularity in the USA. What we don't want to see happen is Marco get into a situation similar to his father's where he was set up to fail.