Former Renault and Caterham F1 driver Vitaly Petrov, who was also Russia's very first Grand Prix driver, believes his FIA World Endurance Championhsip team SMP Racing could contemplate entering Formula 1 in the not so distant future.
SMP, which is financially supported by the SMP Bank and has won two WEC titles in the last two seasons, is based in Moscow and has been successfully involved in numerous categories of racing.
But its main objective has been to promote young Russian driver talents through its own driver development scheme.
Petrov himself will be racing for SMP this year in LMP2, and the 31-year-old is obviously in a good position to offer his knowledge and experience to advise his team on budding young drivers and a potential future involving F1.
"The team has a lot of different programmes planned in future,” Petrov told Motorsport.com.
"Maybe we go LMP1, maybe in future we go to F1, nobody knows yet. But they want to be the best team in the world, and this is what I like.
"I will not just be a race driver in the SMP programme, and this is the kind of contract I was waiting for after F1. We have a lot of other drivers and I will be working together with them – and to help the general people in Russia to build up motorsport there."
SMP's priority remains the WEC but given the importance of its driver development program, which includes approximately 50 young drivers, but various other venues are being considered.
"I think you’ll see a lot of changes this year. We need to make racing more popular in Russia.
“We now have a Formula 1 track. It’s very important to have that – and Sochi has been very popular over the last two years. We were waiting a long time for this."
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