Luca Badoer has been given the chance of a lifetime to race for Scuderia Ferrari in Formula 1, and he’s slower than the 19 year old rookie from Toro Rosso, Alguersuari. Not only is this embarrassing to Badoer and his abilities, but it is an even greater mistake by Ferrari and Di Montezemolo. Why didn’t Ferrari learn from other teams’ mistakes of using a test driver to replace a racing driver in a Grand Prix weekend? Most recently, De la Rosa got a chance in the McLaren and while still running a decent pace for the event weekend, a regular test driver just cannot be expected to jump into a Formula 1 car and be competing for a win, or even points, during a Grand Prix event.

Marc Gene has just recently won the 24 hrs of Le Mans with Peugeot, so why not use Gene to replace the injured Massa? Many speculate that Ferrari wanted to payback their loyal test driver, but at what cost? This is a Championship winning outfit, why would you put a driver in a car just for loyalty? Why wasn’t Ferrari loyal to Schumacher when they kicked him out of the team to make room for Raikkonen? These are questions that will likely remain unanswered.

Ferrari will obviously wait to see what sort of race results Badoer can provide before replacing him for GP events, but Ferrari needs to make sure they get a driver who has been racing recently, and can at least lap faster than 20th place.