told The Race<\/a> ahead of this weekend\u2019s Azerbaijan Grand Prix. \u201cPaul is a very nice guy, a very quick driver as well. And I need to understand what is the best for the team, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cI mean, I don\u2019t have any interest with anybody,\u201d added the Italian, when asked if personal management ties would influence his decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore the people were driving me mad [by complaining] because I was managing 50% of the drivers [on the grid]. Now, I don\u2019t manage anybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t care. I don\u2019t have any interest. My only interest is to try to take in the team the best driver available and do the best job with us. It is as simple as that. I need another one or two races to see, but honestly today I don\u2019t know [which one].\u201d<\/p>\n
Through his tenure as Team Principal at Benetton and then Renault in the 1990s and 2000s, Briatore made a name for himself by spotting future superstars, including World Champions Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, but admits such talent has not caught his eye elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see any other possibility,\u201d he said. \u201cWe see other ones, but we don\u2019t feel it [anything special] \u2013 because the good guys go \u2018boom\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember when Schumi was in Group C [sportscars] with Sauber, he won every race\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cGP2 was the same. [Lewis] Hamilton was bam, bam, bam, bam. Fernando was driving Formula 3000 or whatever and he was winning every race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember testing Fernando. I put Fernando in Minardi and Giancarlo [Minardi, team founder] called me and said: \u2018I have never seen stuff like that\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alpine Executive Advisor Flavio Briatore has given the clearest indication yet that either Franco Colapinto or Paul Aron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-150731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}