Trulli ‘open’ to NASCAR future — and Lotus to announce driver soon

Somehow, these two stories are linked together.

As noted here last week, Jarno Trulli’s NASCAR test seemed to be a bit more serious than he was making out. Now, that seems ever more true as Trulli is being a bit more stock car positive in comments to Autosport, made while he is in Arizona before his testing this week:

“Obviously looking at today’s situation it’s pretty clear that I can race in Formula 1 next year, but doing this test might keep many doors open,” said Trulli. “So I’m fully open on any kind of stuff, even though my priority is to stay in Formula 1.”

[snip]

“The fact that Juan Pablo has stepped in a few years ago has attracted a lot of attention, to many people, and that’s why I’ve been sat and looking at the series because I was trying to understand what really was the target for him, what pushed him to get in the series,” said Trulli.

“But actually when you come here and see how many people come to watch these series, you understand, you realise there’s so much interest around. So it’s really a professional top series, especially for America.”

Jarno has a few things to say about the state of F1, as well, and his former team, Toyota:

“[F1] doesn’t seem too healthy at the moment,” he said. “It’s just my opinion, but I don’t want to make any further comment. I think there’s some work to do.”

[snip]

“I think we were very close many times, especially this year,” said Trulli. “We never had enough luck or we always missed a little bit. It’s a shame that it has ended up like this.

“It’s a shame for the people over there. We had quite a good group, a good team and actually also a great car but probably the car was never strong enough to win a race. I tried and tried many times but we failed.”

In possibly related news, Lotus is on the brink of naming its first driver — widely believed to be Trulli. Via everyone’s new favorite way to break news — Bruno Senna has done it, as has Nelson Piquet — Lotus boss Tony Fernandes used Twitter to tell the world: “1Malaysia Formula 1 team, aka Lotus, has signed its first driver. Public announcement soon. The dream continues.”

Indeed it does.

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