Monday, January 31, 2011

Senna and Grosjean join Lotus Renault reserves

Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean have joined the test and reserve driver line-up for the new Lotus Renault GP team.

The Lotus Renault GP R31 was launched in Valencia on Monday with Senna and Grosjean joining fellow reserves Fairuz Fauzy, Jan Charouz and Ho-Ping Tung as well as first team drivers Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov.

Team boss Eric Boullier said there were currently no plans to offer any of the drivers a Friday practice slot at grands prix this season.

"So far I won't give any Friday mornings to the young drivers," he said. "We'll only do it if the engineers and the race team are confident we can run one Friday morning without affecting the race programme."

However, he did confirm that Senna would be the first reserve if one of the race drivers could not compete.

"I will give it to the one that is ready, and this year Bruno is the most ready driver."

"It's a great moment for me. I've been trying to get into a good Formula One programme for a couple of years so it feels great to be joining such an established team," said Senna. "I'm proud of this achievement and thankful for the opportunity that I've been given.

"This year will be all about integrating myself with the team and extracting the most I can from being in such a competitive environment. Being part of this project will give me so much valuable experience and it's down to me to make the most of it. I hope that I can develop myself and prove to the team that I should be given an opportunity for the future."

Grosjean, who is managed by the Gravity organisation run by Renault majority shareholders Genii, will test for Lotus Renault whilst once again competing in GP2 with the DAMS team. He made his F1 race debut with Renault in 2009 after Nelson Piquet was dropped, but he was not retained for last year.

"2011 will be my comeback year with a third driver spot at Lotus Renault and a whole season in GP2 and GP2 Asia with the DAMS team," Grosjean said. "To be third pilot ... allows me to gain a huge amount of experience, to be in the paddock, to see people, and to understand what I was lacking in my first Formula One experience. Now my idea is to be a race driver in 2012."

Boullier said bringing Grosjean back was all part of the team's plan to see a French driver back in F1.

"Romain is here as well, but that is more of a strategy to put a French driver back in F1," he said. "In France there is no more grand prix and no drivers in F1. It is part of the plan as well for Romain, who we think is a very good driver, we'd like to put him back in F1 as a French driver, but he has to commit some stuff beforehand as a GP2 driver."

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