Heikki Kovalainen wants race seat in Lotus – Formula 1 news
Heikki Kovalainen wants to join Lotus as a potential replacement of Romain Grosjean in the 2013 Formula 1 season, according to a Finnish Television channel, MTV3.
Grosjean has not been able to perform well for his team in this season and has caused many accidents which resulted in the retirement of many other drivers. Moreover, he has also faced immense criticism over his harsh driving style.
Additionally, he has been surrounded by many rumours that the Enstone based team may replace him with any other driver in the next season.
Furthermore, there are many drivers which have been associated with Lotus for their next year’s driver line-up. Meanwhile, Kovalainen has also expressed that he would like to race along with his compatriot, Kimi Raikkonen in the coming year.
“Kovalainen wants the place of (Romain) Grosjean, teammate of Kimi Raikkonen and the new contract with Grosjean has not yet been finalised,” the channel announced on their website without revealing sources.
Even though, the French driver could only secure eighth place in the drivers’ standings after scoring 96 points as compared to Raikkonen who came third in the championship and scored 207 points. Nonetheless, he has been supported by his team principal, Eric
Boullier who said that the 26-year-old has learnt from his mistakes and will surely try to come up stronger in the future.
In addition, the team owner, Gerard Lopez has also shown desire to retain Grosjean in the next season too.
“I would like it to be Romain, but it depends more on him than me,” Lotus co-owner Gerard Lopez told AFP last Sunday.
It will be important to mention that the Frenchman has some huge sponsors with him from which the British squad can take huge advantage in the coming year. However, nothing has been declared so far and it will be exciting to see whether he stays in the team
or not.
Lotus have performed tremendously well in this year and have achieved admirable results, but they need to be make some significant developments in order to be more competent in the next season if they want to claim the world championship title.
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