AUGUST 5, 2008

Rossiter going to America?

Former Honda and Super Aguri F1 test driver James Rossiter has been announced as a driver with the Andretti Green Racing (AGR) in at least the next two races in the American Le Mans Series. He will join another former F1 man Franck Montagny.

Former Honda and Super Aguri F1 test driver James Rossiter has been announced as a driver with the Andretti Green Racing (AGR) in at least the next two races in the American Le Mans Series. He will join another former F1 man Franck Montagny.

Andretti Green dropped both Bryan Herta and Christian Fittipaldi in June after poor results in the early part of the year. Montagny was signed and the second ride was left open. Rossiter, a Honda protege, is a good choice and that leads to questions about whether ultimately he may end up as a member of the AGR team in Indycars once he has some more experience in America.

AGR currently runs four cars for Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick and Hideki Mutoh. The team also has development driver links with Raphael Matos and Arie Luyendyk Jr.

Getting into the IRL via the sports car team is not impossible as Ryan Briscoe has proved with Penske. He raced for the Penske Porsche LMP2 team in ALMS in 2007 and was then signed to race in the IRL for this year, replacing Sam Hornish Jr, who switched to NASCAR. Briscoe has won the IRL races at Milwaukee and Mid-Ohio this year.

"We feel very good about adding James to our line-up for at least these next two events," team co-owner Michael Andretti said. "He's a promising, young talent and we're looking forward to seeing what he can do here."

Rossiter is 24 and has been looking for a way to break into Formula 1 since 2006.