American youngster Alexander Rossi is to join Team Lotus for the upcoming F1 young driver test in Abu Dhabi.
Rossi will contest the non-championship
GP2 event at the Yas Marina circuit with Caterham Team AirAsia before staying on for the F1 test, where he will spend a day working with Team Lotus.
“I am very excited to finally announce I will be competing in Abu Dhabi with Caterham Team AirAsia and will have the chance to put more F1 miles on my CV with Team Lotus,” he said. “After the positive
GP2 tests in
Jerez and Barcelona I feel we have a good chance of a strong result in the
GP2 races and I will definitely be going into the weekend fully focused and motivated for a race win - looking at the team's past results I see no reason why we can't achieve that. For the F1 test I will be looking to learn as much as possible, do the best job I can and soak up every minute, in and out of the car.
“The Yas Marina circuit is really pretty impressive. The track itself has some quite slow corners and not a great deal of overtaking opportunities, but it seems to combine a road course with a circuit course. In the first two sectors you can be quite brave with what you're doing but in the marina section there's very little run-off area as the walls are really close, so you have to restrain yourself somewhat. Every lap requires two different driving styles and that in itself makes it fun and very interesting to race for both the drivers and the engineers.”
Rossi previously tested with
BMW Sauber as a reward for his success while competing in Formula BMW.