Lotus F1 expects Grosjean to stay in 2015
After confirming Pastor Maldonado this summer, Lotus hopes to do the same with Romain Grosjean for the 2015 season.
Buoyed by its change of engine supplier announced a few days after the Japanese Grand Prix, Lotus is determined to finalize its line-up for the next season.
Pastor Maldonado has already been extended for 2015. The Venezuelan arrived at Enstone at the beginning of 2014 with his personal sponsor, the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, which provides a significant financial boon for the team.
On his side, Romain Grosjean, supported by another oil company, Total – which has just lost its CEO, Christophe de Margerie – has not indicated where his future lies, even though the announcement of the partnership between Lotus and Mercedes has not left him indifferent. Contacts have taken place with Ferrari, notably, but the probable arrival of Sebastian Vettel seems to have closed off this option.
Gérard Lopez, the owner of the British team, acknowledged that, contractually, Grosjean could leave due to the poor results in 2014, but he still expected him to stay: « I do not expect any changes. Romain has a clause that allows him to leave the team because the results set in his contract are not being met. That is the case this year: we are not meeting the objectives set by his contract. He would be free to leave if he wants to. »
« I have known Romain long enough to know that if he were to leave, it would be for a team that can compete for victories and so on. I think at this stage, he would be wise to stay here given the changes we are making for next year. We will see, but I don’t think there will be any changes. […] It goes in that direction, » he concluded, for Autosport.
Romain Grosjean began his career in the top discipline in 2009, at Enstone, finishing the season as a replacement for Nelson Piquet Jr from the European Grand Prix, in the context of the 2008 Singapore cheating scandal. Thrown in at the deep end too soon, he did not convince, alongside a Fernando Alonso who was himself struggling with the Renault R29. After rebuilding a track record in Auto GP and GP2 between 2010 and 2011, he returned to Enstone in 2012, with Lotus F1, alongside Kimi Räikkönen.
