To be fair to Badoer he spent most of the first practice session slowing down to let everyone else pass whilst he got to grips with the car and the track.
As far as "why Badoer", well, he's been their test driver for 10 years, he's obviously helped in that time with car development so Ferrari may use his car as a mule for new bits and bobs for the 2010 campaign, something they couldn't do with Kimi or Felipe.
Not sure how viable that is simply because - there is such a huge gap between where Kimi is and Badoer in performance, how will any results they actually collect from Badoer's car be applicable to a car next season
imo the whole point about F1 is that final 5 - 10% of performance is crucial to the reliabiility , you can do 100,000 miles testing something at 85% and it wont fail - but try at 95% and it could fail within 25 miles or something
Badoer will get better undoubtedly - but Im not convinced he will ever get to that final 5-10% of the other drivers abilities
I'm pretty sure the 2 car rule has been there for a couple decades at least.
There is talk of Ferrari wanting the rule changed next year to allow either 2 or 3 cars because Ferrari wants to run a 3rd car as a way to get a competitive advantage in the testing ban era. The more cars you've got running using slightly different setups the more you learn and the faster you will be at the next race... I'm not sure how they will get this through because it seems to me like only McLaren and Ferrari and perhaps Red Bull could afford to run a 3rd car really. And it kind of goes against the cost cutting measures.
You could well be right
I personaly dont like all these junior teams with the same chassis, manufacturers giving their engines over to multiple teams is bad enough (necessary in the current climate, but sad non the less imo) - but to have three car teams really shouldnt be allowed, its hard enough for even the midfield teams to get points imagine how it would be even if two big teams have a 3rd car , majority of the time all those 6 will be in the points and 8 or more teams (16 cars) fighting over two points finishes - making it harder and harder for those teams to justify being in F1 in the first place
I would love a proper season long fight between McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Brawn (and my heart says Williiams as well but I think thats unlikely) next season