{"id":9337,"date":"2010-11-02T07:15:10","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T11:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=9337"},"modified":"2010-11-02T07:15:10","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T11:15:10","slug":"kovalainen-denies-briatore-blocked-f1-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/kovalainen-denies-briatore-blocked-f1-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Kovalainen denies Briatore blocked F1 career"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Heikki Kovalainen has denied media reports claiming his former manager Flavio Briatore twice prevented his formula one race debut.<\/p>\n<p>A Finnish newspaper had said the Finn could have raced with Minardi and then Williams in 2004 and 2005, but Kovalainen instead had to wait until 2007 for a race seat at the then Briatore-managed Renault to open up.<\/p>\n<p>Kovalainen, now 29, subsequently split with Briatore after the crashgate scandal, and negotiated his own move from McLaren to Lotus for 2010.<\/p>\n<p>But he wrote on Twitter late on Monday: &#8220;(The) news about my management blocking my career (is) so not true.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We had (a) clear plan since I joined (the) Renault junior programme and stuck to it 100 per cent.\u00a0 Ignore the false headlines originating from Finland,&#8221; added Kovalainen.<\/p>\n<p>In other driver news, Williams refused to comment on speculation about its 2011 lineup, following reports that Pastor Maldonado is a candidate to join the team next year if Nico Hulkenberg does not accept the offer of a five-year contract.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have no comment to make concerning our driver line up for 2011 at this juncture,&#8221; said a spokeswoman.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #888888;\">\u00a0\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heikki Kovalainen has denied media reports claiming his former manager Flavio Briatore twice prevented his formula one race debut. A Finnish newspaper had said the Finn could have raced with Minardi and then Williams in 2004 and 2005, but Kovalainen instead had to wait until 2007 for a race seat at the then Briatore-managed Renault &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,517],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9338,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9337\/revisions\/9338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}