Formula 1
Fisichella regrets leaving Renault
Giancarlo Fisichella has admitted he regrets leaving Renault (then Benetton) last year and believes he would be doing better if he had stayed with the team. With Jordan Fisichella has had a poor start to the season, plagued by unreliability and yet ...
Edited: May 4, 2002, 3:29 AM
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Giancarlo Fisichella has admitted he regrets leaving Renault (then Benetton) last year and believes he would be doing better if he had stayed with the team. With Jordan Fisichella has had a poor start to the season, plagued by unreliability and yet to score a point -- but Renault were just as poor last year when he made the decision.
Giancarlo Fisichella.
Photo by Brousseau Photo.
"My one regret is that if I'd stayed at Renault, I'd be doing much better now. But in August, when I had to decide, they were still three seconds back," Fisichella said, adding that this year things were not looking good: "The season started badly and has got worse."
While many consider Fisichella one of the best drivers on the grid, he has yet to win a Grand Prix -- he thinks that he's never had the chance of driving a top car because the big teams snub Italian drivers.
"(Riccardo) Patrese and (Michele) Alboreto used to win, but they were driving Williams and Ferraris. I've never had a chance like that," he commented. "Now it's obvious that you can only win with three cars. Take Jacques Villeneuve: at Williams he won, now he's floundering. But the richer teams like McLaren and Williams keep snubbing Italians and preferring drivers like Raikkonen. Perhaps it's about mentality but the biggest teams prefer to take drivers from other nationalities."
Jordan's poor performance so far is not encouraging and the recent staff shake up Eddie Jordan implemented was a bit more drastic than Fisichella expected but he is hoping for improvements in the future.
"When this happened, they just told me we'd be losing a couple of engineers," he said of the loss of employees, which included joint managing director Trevor Foster and head of engineering Tim Holloway. "But they say things will change here and that Honda will give us a new engine, so I can only have faith in the team."
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