Lotus has 'tasty' options for Grosjean replacement

Lotus F1 Team deputy team principal Federico Gastaldi is sad to see Romain Grosjean heading to Haas in 2016 but says his team has some 'tasty' options for next year.

With a letter of intent from Renault regarding a buy-out of the Enstone-based operation, and a 70-day adjournment in the court action brought against Lotus by Britain's tax authority HMRC, Gastaldi is confident that things are looking a lot brighter for the team than they were even a week ago at Japan.

"We’re doing everything to ensure that we’ve got a desirable race seat," Gastaldi pointed out. "We know we have Pastor confirmed for one seat and we know that there are quite a few tasty drivers available out there."

Gastaldi wouldn't be drawn on actually naming names, however: "I can at this stage publicly confirm that it won’t be me driving," he quipped.

"What happens next is that there’ll be a number of discussions in a number of places then at some point we’ll have an announcement to make."

One of the names connected with a possible drive at a new Renault works team is current GP2 championship points leader Stoffel Vandoorne. Currently also working as a test and development driver at McLaren, this week's confirmation that Jenson Button will stay at that team for another year alongside Fernando Alonso means that the Belgian finds his way into Formula One temporarily logjammed.

However the co-owner of Vandoorne's GP2 team ART, Frédéric Vasseur, is one of the names being tipped to become the manager of Renault F1's new works team, and if so he might bring his star driver along with him.

Meanwhile Gastaldi said that he was sad to be saying farewell to Grosjean.

"We know that we can now publically say bonne chance to Romain who is headed
to pastures new next year. He’s been a real asset to us over the years so we’ll certainly miss him."

Grosjean himself has said that he's equally sad to be leaving Lotus and left the door open for a possible return in the future, and that conformation of Renault's intention to buy the team had simply come too late in the day to prevent him moving to Haas.

There are still five races left in the 2015 season, beginning next week with the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi, and Gastaldi said that the team planned to make the most of the remaining opportunities.

"It would be nice for Romain to have a good positive end to his Enstone career and it would be great for Pastor to have a strong run of results to bring his season to a close. We’re all working to those aims."

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