Dutchman Robert Doornbos may be giving us a clue as to the fate of American Scott Speed’s race seat with STR. According to Autosport.com, Doornbos has confirmed that he will be joining a Champ Car team in the “very near future”.
I tried to race at Toro Rosso but there were some uncertainties there, so I decided to go for certain for the third driver role. And I am going to race in the States for sure.
Sounds like Robert isn’t all that excited about being demoted to a test driver roll again after getting to race the RB2 in the last 3 races of the 2006 season when Klien lost his Red Bull race seat.
It is implied that Robert will be combining the rolls of both the Red Bull test driver and a race driver in the Champ Car series. Just last week he was at Sebring International in Florida testing with Minardi Team USA. MTU is owned by former Minardi F1 team owner/boss, Paul Stoddart. In 2005 Doornbos raced 8 Grand Prix for Minardi F1.
So, you ask, “how does this affect Scott Speed?” Well, I’ll tell you… If Doornbos, unlike Klien, is happy racing in Champ Car, that means that he won’t continue to pursue the STR race seat. With Doornbos out of the picture, that leaves one less FIA Superlicensed driver competing to drive the Ferrari-powered and Newey-designed (?) car.
