Haas F1 Team driver Romain Grosjean will mentor Formula V8 3.5 Series star Louis Deletraz during 2016.
Deletraz has recently been announced as one of the first members of the Renault Sport Junior Team, and will attack the Formula V8 3.5 series with defending champions Fortec Motorsports in 2016, the team that took Oliver Rowland to the Formula Renault 3.5 Series title last season.
Grosjean will now support the Swiss teenager as he looks to build on his Formula Renault 2.0 NEC title and his runners-up spot in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 Series in 2015.
“We’ve been training together already and that’s quite important for me, cause he knows a lot – and I was never in a professional environment with a real coach or anything,” said Deletraz on Motorsport.com.
“There’s nothing really specific – just, if something comes to my mind and there’s anything I need to ask, he will probably know it, and that’s the important thing.”
Grosjean was happy to be able to help Deletraz, as, part-Swiss himself, he went to the same school as the teenager, and is following a similar route through motorsport as the ten-time Formula 1 podium finisher.
“He kind of has the same route that I followed,” said Grosjean. “He’s living in Geneva, he’s Swiss, I’m half-Swiss.
“He’s joining the Renault programme, now going to 3.5 which is an important category and will be an important year for him.
“I had the chance to have the same with Jean Alesi when I was younger, he was living in Geneva so we were always going hiking in Chamonix together. I think that was actually very useful and I thought, ‘why not do the same?’
“If I can be not ‘the old guy that just gives him advice’, but like a friend that can help him because I’ve been through quite a bit [myself], that’ll be quite cool.”
