NOVEMBER 29, 2005

Tarso Marques? Really?

According to reports from Brazil Tarso Marques is on the verge of announcing a return to Formula 1. The 29-year-old has been quoted as saying that he will soon announce a Formula 1 testing deal for 2006 leading to a race deal in 2007. Marques is not willing to say which team is involved but given his record to date the only likely way he will be in a position to get a drive is by paying a healthy sum of money to a team. This creates questions as there are not many drives left in F1 and it is hard to imagine that Marques could be the man who will join BMW Sauber or Williams under such contractual terms. The MF1 team might be possibility but it has already announced a third driver in Nicky Pastorelli and specified that he will test on Fridays. Marques might be an additional test driver for the team.

Marques is 29 and has competed in 26 Grands Prix to date, all of them being with Minardi. In recent years he has been in America, where he briefly raced for Penske before ending up with Dale Coyne Racing. Raising the money needed for F1 has always been a problem for Marques and so one must suppose that he has found a new sponsor. It is worth noting that the Marques Motorsport team in the Brazilian Stock Car V8 series (called Action Power) is funded by Petrobras and its subsidiary Lubrax. The team has recently announced that it will be running Thiago Marques (Tarso's brother) and former F1 driver Luciano Burti in 2006.

Petrobras has a deal with Williams at the moment but has been talking to other teams about the future.