JANUARY 26, 2004

Renault places its bets

Renault has announced Êdetails of its Driver Development programme with the announcement that Jose-Maria Lopez, the inaugural Renault V6 champion, will be moving to Formula 3000 and that Heikki Kovalainen will stay for another year in the the Formula Nissan World Series, despite finishing second last year.

There are four new recruits to the scheme: Jerome D'Ambrosio (Belgium), Lucas DiGrassi (Brazil), Loic Duval (France) and Giedo van der Garde (Netherlands). D'Ambrosio will race in Formula Renault in the French and European series with Graff Racing; DiGrassi will be in the British Formula 3 series with HiTech Racing; Duval will race in the Formula 3 Euroseries with Signature and will have Van der Garde as his team mate.

Van der Garde's career is being supported by Formula 1 racer Jos Verstappen.