Grosjean Confirmed to Fill Heidfeld’s F1 Shoes at Pirelli

When testing of Pirelli’s Formula One tyres continues in Monza next week, former Renault F1 driver Romain Grosjean will take Nick Heidfeld’s place behind the wheel of the Toyota TF109 being used for pre-season tyre development. Heidfeld has been released from his contract with Pirelli following the announcement that he will drive for Sauber Motorsport for the remainder of the 2010 season.

“We’d like to thank Nick for his very valuable contribution to our tyre development programme and we wish him all the best for the future,” commented Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery. “In order to avoid favouring any individual team, we have jointly decided to release Nick from his contract and now we have chosen Romain to test for us in Monza. He’s packed a lot of experience into a short space of time, including all our GP3 tyre development, so I’m sure he’ll be able to give us some very useful feedback.”

Over the course of this past week Pirelli has carried out testing at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain. Heidfeld completed nearly 100 laps of running on the opening day and a similar distance on day two. The objective of the tests was to finalise development on tyre construction prior to the next test in Monza when Pirelli expects to complete most of the work in this area. At the same time, Pirelli’s development engineers also tried out a range of different compounds as part of their focus on preparing the four slick options that will be offered to all the Formula One teams next year. “The tests here at Jerez have gone extremely well and we completed all the work that we planned over the two days. Now we move onto Monza, where our task will be to finalise the construction before we focus further on compounds,” Hembery concluded.