The same reason he flew half way across the world to spend 4 days in a car park in Las Vegas racing the best karters on the planet - he wants to push himself constantly against the best drivers.
Nothing has been confirmed yet though. Waiting game! innit aii
I think we can expect some solid performances. He looked good in las Vegas if a little ragid to be honest. but for a 40+ year old man... wow.
Apparently Schumacher missed the Ferrari Xmas Lunch thing and De Montezemelo failed to mention Schumacher once in his speech. he mentioned Kimi, ALonso and Massa though.
It's really just more hearsay and inside sources, but I'm a little less skeptical now. How trustworthy are these German publications (Bild and Focus)? I don't really care if he comes back or not, but it would be interesting.
Focus and Bild are among the worst media here in case of trustworthy. Bild is the worst actually. Focus tries to come serious but they write so much shit.
But it (the 5.1 million dollar Schumacher deal) was reported on friday in radio by one of the most trustworthy radio stations with more details as there was in BILD, havent read the Focus article though. Might be true, might not.
great thank you now we have karting f1 schumacher bbc and our resident balls collection in the same thread
i hope youre happy when we tip over the bs event horizon
i see maor have confirmed the virgin deal (cue loads of virgin jokes)
also ferrari have stated that schumi is free to race elsewhere and they're happy about it.
2 ways of looking at it, either they're making their position known in public so he doesn't need to worry about it or they're doing it so it can't be used as an excuse if the merc deal doesn't happen
There's something intriguing me about Alvaro Parente being the 3rd driver. As soon as I read the news in Autosport Portugal, the article was showered with comments about how Parente is going to fail in F1 as a team's 3rd driver.
I mean, what the hell? He's the best portuguese driver in a F1 line-up since the times of Pedro Lamy (don't get me wrong, Monteiro was a good driver, but with today's F1 cars' reliability, there's no room for a guy who looks after his car [like Richard Hammond looks after Oliver] but isn't fast). I wouldn't wish to be in any 3rd driver's shoes after reading this.
Being a 3rd driver has never exactly been a guaranteed way in to a race-seat. Lots of drivers have tested, been competitive, and never made it any further.
Parente could be a great driver, but unless he finds the money to buy a race seat (which he clearly does not have at the moment) there'll always be someone ahead of him in the pecking order at the small new teams. And how likely is it that a big team is going to sign him after a season of testing for a small new team? Not very imo.
He has a lot of obstacles in his way still.
So while he may not fail at his job, he may be as quick as his team mates, I reckon history would stack the odds against him making it big in F1. I mean, look at Gary Paffett, who couldn't even get another test drive with another team after McLaren dropped him (though iirc they may have later signed him up as the 4th driver).
As the Autosport Portugal says, there's a big chance that Parente might sign in as GP2 Racing Engeneering driver, which will give him the chance to fight for the GP2 title. A great season in GP2 might open doors for more sponsors and, of course, more money.
Alvaro Parente is a great driver, very agressive but reliable, very inteligent in the way he manges a race and his car along the track and it's better to be a 3rd driver than no driver at all...