It's not easy to write a coherent biography of a driver launching into his first 'racing' F1 season yet who technically misses out on the label of "rookie" by a good five years. Anthony Davidson is in a pretty strange place, having spent those years driving phenomenal amounts of mileage and developing some of the sport's top machinery yet barely turning a wheel in anger.

Having made his reputation as an awesome multi-championship karter on-track with the likes of Button and Wheldon (his 303 finals from 1987-99 gave him 64 wins 71 poles, and 170 podiums) he showed similarly impressive performances in cars in the following years, in Formula Ford, British F3 and at Le Mans and Sebring with Prodrive (22 wins, 21 poles and 39 podiums out of 70 races).
It's a pretty enviable performance record, and one that's always worth repeating to those who insist he's no more than a very good test driver.

The test driver / 3rd driver position has also had a kind of sadly self-fulfilling element to it too; and with every passing year a few more idiots have joined the queue that say that Ant hasn't raced for so long that there's no point in putting him in a race seat now, what with all the bright young things coming up...

Teaming up once again with Taku is a thrilling proposition; not only on account of their driving together in the Carlin F3 team in 2001 but also because of a more recent relationship at BAR Honda. Not only can Ant bring lots of learnings from the RA106 and a possibly unparalleled development driver role from his stint there - a real bonus to young and new team like SAF1 - but he's also bound to be eager to find some sweet spot of both working with Taku and working for himself to make the most of this opportunity.

Anthony is going to want to prove himself, and there's little doubt that he's going to be putting every ounce of energy into doing that.

He's got the fitness, he's got the mileage, he's got the technical expertise, and he's also got a serious *racing* streak that too many have seen fit to forget or ignore. And even though you'd obviously accept that Aguri sit at the lower end of the grid, you'd have to be pretty complacent not to expect something special from him.