The FIA today asked the Super Aguri Formula 1 team to remove Japanese driver Yugi Ide from his race seat. He will now be a test driver, and former Renault F1 test driver Franck Montagny will replace him. It’s a good thing they took this action now. Ide is a safety disaster waiting to happen. I don’t know much about his successes in Japanese racing series, but he clearly is not ready for racing Formula 1.

There’s a lot of spin that this was based on “advice” from the FIA, but in reality he just plain stinks as a F1 driver, and represents a safety hazard under race conditions. There hasn’t been a driver fatality in F1 since 1994 (Ayrton Senna). Let’s keep it that way.