Hitech Racing team boss David Hayle says he is looking to sign a top-line replacement for 2007 British F3 International Series champion Marko Asmer 'as soon as possible' as the team focuses its attention on the defence of its title.
Asmer dominated the series in 2007, winning half of the 22 races en-route to the title, and is now in contention for a test driver role with the
BMW Sauber
F1 squad having already tested for the team prior to Christmas – leaving Hitech with a big space to fill for the year ahead.
Although Walter Grubmuller has signed on for a second season and Max Chilton has joined from Arena, neither is expected to challenge for the title in 2008 with the team having taken a longer-term view of putting the youngsters in a position to fight for honours next year, making it vital that a race winning driver fills the vacant third car.
"Walter is a long-term project and we hope he will progress this year and then go for the title in 2009," Hayle admitted to
Crash.net. "That has always been the plan with him as he hadn't done a lot before coming to F3 and he is learning a lot. Max struggled a bit last year from being a one car team in my opinion and we didn't see the true potential he has. Again, like Walter, he should be going for the title in 2009 and hopefully we will be together for two years to do that. Now we are just looking for the Marko Asmer replacement, which isn't so easy.
"Max and Walter are definitely on a learning curve in 2008 again so we need the Marko replacement to teach the young guys the way forward. We need a proven race winner who is a potential title contender to guide them and at the moment I don't know who it is."
Hayle admitted that he was hoping to sign a third driver as soon as possible as the team prepares its new Dallara chassis for the opening rounds of the season at
Oulton Park - stating that it was a case of finding the driver who would best integrate into the team.
