New F3 Euroseries champion Romain Grosjean will get a taster of what he should be able to expect next season when he joins Racing Engineering for a run in its GP2 Dallara at this week's Paul Ricard group test.

The Frenchman, who has the backing of Renault's driver development programme, expects to join the F1 feeder series next year, but has admitted to hoping that his benefactors parachute him into a leading team. However, with predecessor Lucas di Grassi having had to start his GP2 career at Durango in 2006, Grosjean's appearance with Alfonso d'Orleans Borbon's team may be a precursor to his next step.

With no participation in next year's new GP2 Asia Series, Racing Engineering will be using the four days at Ricard - the final series test of the year - to evaluate potential partners for Javier Villa in 2008. Grosjean will be among six pilots testing the Repsol/Telefónica-backed Dallaras, joining Marcos Martínez, who has already raced as Villa's team-mate this season, Markus Niemelä, Luca Filippi, Paolo Nocera and Alberto Valerio.

Like Martinez and Filippi, Niemela raced in the series this season, completing a handful of races for BCN Competicion, while new Italian F3 king Nocera and Valerio both ran with different teams during the previous Jerez test. Filippi ran exclusively with DPR at the Spanish session, and will start the Ricard test with the British team too, having raced with Super Nova throughout 2007.

"They are all young drivers with proven skills as their excellent results in GP2 and other categories show," a team statement claimed, "During the four days of testing at Paul Ricard, they will have the chance to show their talent under the eyes of the Racing Engineering staff, for whom these tests are very interesting as they will allow
them to watch closely how each driver works with the team."