Bob Bell admits it would be sad to lose Romain Grosjean from the Renault fold if the F1 team drops him for 2010, but says it also has to assess alternative options so to ensure it fields the strongest driver line-up possible.
Frenchman Grosjean, a member of Renault’s young driver programme since 2005, graduated to the F1 team from the European Grand Prix in August in place of the axed Nelson Piquet Jr, the 23-year-old at the time having been in contention for the GP2 Series title.
But while he sometimes qualified within a respectable margin of illustrious team-mate Fernando Alonso, the former GP2 Asia champion made a number of mistakes and failed to finish higher than 13th in his seven race appearances.
Grosjean’s form now looks unlikely to have been enough for him to hold onto the seat for next season, with Toyota’s Timo Glock having emerged as favourite to join the already-confirmed Robert Kubica in an all-new line-up as Renault looks to bounce back from its wretched 2009.
Although Renault has been proud of the fact Grosjean is the first driver from its home country to race for its works team since it returned to team ownership in 2001, acting team principal Bell says nationality won't be a factor in the Enstone team's decision of the second driver.
“Romain still remains a possibility but in fairness to ensuring that we deliver the best driver line-up to the team, we need to look at all the possible options,” Bell said last weekend in Abu Dhabi.
“If Romain does drop out of the equation, yes, it will be sad to lose him from the Renault programme and obviously he’s French, so that carries some consequences for the team but ultimately, and I think Renault fully support us in this, we need to put the best drivers in the car that we can afford for next year and if that’s Romain, fine, if it isn’t, if it’s someone else, then so be it but our objective next year is to have the strongest line-up.”
Although Renault had high hopes for its French protégé’s F1 baptism after a successful career in the junior formulae, Bell says Grosjean’s chances of making an immediate impression haven’t been helped by the in-season testing ban.
However, while he has encountered several difficulties in the first seven races of his career in motorsport’s top category, Bell remains convinced that Grosjean has more potential than he has shown so far.
“It is genuinely a fact that it is extremely difficult for a young driver now to enter Formula 1 mid-season with no real testing experience behind him," the acting team boss said.
“If he’s fortunate enough to be introduced to the team before the season starts and can get through a winter testing programme then that’s one thing to be dropped (into the team) in mid-season as Romain was.
“It’s very hard for any of them and so that’s a problem that Formula 1 has put upon itself, quite rightly so.
“The reduction in testing was done for good reason, I’m not being critical of it but it does make it difficult for drivers, so he’s had an uphill struggle.
“He’s done a sound job in dealing with that.
“He has two problems that he has to confront. Firstly, his team-mate is a double world champion and that’s a hard metric to judge yourself against as a young driver.
“And we haven’t given him a particularly good car and that is equally hard for a young driver to come in. So it hasn’t been an easy birth for him in Formula 1 but that doesn’t deny that he’s got a lot of talent and I’m very sure that in the future we will see that talent exploited.”
Renault has been linked with a host of experienced names for the vacant seat at the team in recent weeks, with speculation over the Abu Dhabi weekend strongly suggesting that German ace Glock is the driver most likely to partner Kubica.
With an unusually high amount of high-profile drivers still without confirmed drives for 2010 heading into the winter, Bell says Renault is evaluating all options but is keen to tie-up its second driver as quickly as possible.
“It is a fact that there are quite a few drivers on the market at the minute, and I think, to do justice to the team, we have to look at all of the options, which is what we’re doing,” he added.
“We’re in the process of evaluating all of the drivers that are available and we will make a decision on which driver we attempt to reach agreement with as rapidly as we can.
“It’s important for the team to do that and we’re not ruling out any possibilities.”