I’m returning to last October’s United States Grand Prix weekend for today’s picture. This one took me a while to caption since, despite the fact that this is an Alfa Romeo Sauber, the car number (cropped off in this version) and driver helmet colour wasn’t a match for either of their regular drivers. Teams often let their development drivers have a spin during the Friday practice so I assumed that was what was going on here but my usual approach of cross-referencing the car number with a list of driver numbers failed too. The car is labeled “98” but that’s a driver number that hasn’t been used since 1998 when Roberto Mehri last drove for Marussia.
After a bit more digging, I found an article saying that F2 driver Théo Pourchaire had just been hired as a new development driver for Alfa Romeo and was given a drive that day. His usual race number is 10 but this is already taken by Pierre Gasly in F1 so I assume he’s picked up the unused 98 for his Formula 1 activities.
For the technically inclined...