Less than 24 hours before the drivers are due in the Spa Francorchamps paddock for the FIA Press Conference, Renault has confirmed that Bruno Senna will race for the team this weekend.
A brief statement said only that he would race in Spa in place of Nick Heidfeld and that he would be in the press conference. The team will announce more details in due course.
The news was first broken by BBC’s Eddie Jordan on Monday and comes after a disappointing campaign for Heidfeld, who was drafted in to replace the injured Robert Kubica. Senna drove in Hungary on Friday morning as a prelude to this opportunity. Like his former HRT team mate Karun Chandhok in Germany, he is being given a chance to show what he can do over a race weekend.
There have been suggestions from team principal Eric Boullier that he would like to run Romain Grosjean in the car this year, the French/Swiss driver is managed by Gravity, which is part of the Genii group that owns the Renault team.
At the same time, Genii announced earlier this month an important strategic tie up with WWI Group, to create a $10 billion investment partnership. As the statement said, “The two companies will focus on private equity investments in Energy, Renewable Energy, Real Estate, Information Technology, Telecommunications, Oil, Gas and the Automotive sector. Their association gives birth to the 8th most powerful private equity investment company in South America.”
The idea is to get Brazilian investors to diversify their portfolios, so it’s very much Brazil focussed.
Clearly Bruno Senna being from such a significant Brazilian family, there must be some positive connections here, but it’s not clear at this point whether he will hold on to the seat to the end of the season or whether Grosjean will get a run once he’s clinched the GP2 title. For a driver, Senna is a very good communicator and an effective operator in social and business situations.
Long term the driver situation is fluid; Renault still has to wait on Kubica who is in rehabilitation after his rally accident. There is talk of him trying out an F1 simulator in the next month to assess the repair to his damaged bones and nerves.
This weekend marks the 50th race since Renault’s last win in F1.
Heidfeld is on the sidelines again, a position he’s become accustomed to. He had a great podium at the start of the year in Malaysia, but since then he’s not had a great run, with five further points finishes, but retiring from three of the last five races. He has been outqualified 8-3 by Vitaly Petrov and sits two points ahead of him on 34 points. Renault are 14 points behind Mercedes in the constructors championship and 31 points ahead of Sauber, so Mercedes are probably the most relieved by today’s news as it makes it less likely that they will be caught for fourth place with Petrov and Senna in the Renault, even though Schumacher sits below the Renault drivers in the table currently.