Campos still in talks with De La Rosa
Adrian Campos practically ruled out signing De la Rosa, however, Carabante says he is still an option
Tuesday, 15, Dec 2009 11:07
By Adam Leveridge
Campos Meta team principal Jose Ramon Carabante has confirmed he is still in negotiations with Pedro de la Rosa to fill the team's second race seat for its inaugural assault on the formula one world championship in 2010.
Bruno Senna has already signed a deal with the Spanish team and, although Campos owner Adrian Campos has all but ruled out taking on De La Rosa for the 2010 season because of a lack of Spanish backers, Carabante insists he is still an option.
"Talks with Pedro de la Rosa are not broken," Carabante told Ond Cero radio.
"It would be a dream if he was our driver next season.
"As of today there's a chance that the seat left could go to a Spanish driver and, of course, for us the dream would be if it was Pedro de la Rosa. Talks with him have never been broken.
"We would have Pedro for free if it was necessary, without him having to bring anything. With the budget covered, I can guarantee you that Adrian Campos's first option... is to bring Pedro because he's a person we love and we would be thrilled to have him in our team, but it depends a lot on the sponsors.
"As of today, Pedro is the only Spanish driver we are considering."
However, Carabante conceded that GP2 stars Pastor Maldonado and Vitaly Petrov are the most realistic options for Campos.
"There are other options with drivers backed by countries, like Pastor Maldonado, who has 20,000 companies who want to join, or Vitaly Petrov," said Carabante.
"There is some other option, but our target is to sign the second driver before the end of the year and we hope to achieve that."
Carabante also outlined the team's long-term plans, by stating that Campos is aiming to build its own chassis in its Murcia headquarters and to run Ferrari engines as of 2011.
"Our intention is to have Ferrari engines after a year with Cosworth. It's all progressing well," Carabante added.