Luiz Razia has admitted Team Lotus’ failure to score a point in 2011 is the reason he is not making his grand prix debut at home in Brazil this weekend.<\/p>\n
Throughout 2011, it has been rumoured that Brazilian Razia, a 22-year-old team test driver, will replace either Jarno Trulli or Heikki Kovalainen for the entire Interlagos race weekend.<\/p>\n
Instead, Razia will simply be driving in Friday morning practice.<\/p>\n
A report by Brazil’s Globo claims it is Team Lotus’ nervousness about losing the coveted tenth place in the constructors’ standings – worth millions in the provisions of the Concorde Agreement – that thwarted Razia’s debut.<\/p>\n
Lotus has again been the strongest of the three teams vying for the lucrative tenth place in 2011, but like HRT and Virgin the team nonetheless failed to score a single point.<\/p>\n
“I’m not racing just because of that,” claimed Razia.\u00a0 “Just because of an accident or something a team can end up finishing 12th.<\/p>\n
“The tenth place is worth millions and I can’t take that from the team.\u00a0 They have to make decisions and unfortunately they can’t afford to lose the tenth place.<\/p>\n
“Tony Fernandes has spoken openly about it.\u00a0 I paid the price for them having not scored points.\u00a0 For them it’s a lot of money,” he said in Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n
Razia, however, remains hopeful he could make his breakthrough next year.<\/p>\n
“It’s not ruled out.\u00a0 Today, contracts can be easily broken,” he said.<\/p>\n
“As we have seen, Heidfeld went out in the middle of the season, and Ferrari fired Raikkonen, so I am not discounting any possibility for 2012.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Luiz Razia has admitted Team Lotus’ failure to score a point in 2011 is the reason he is not making his grand prix debut at home in Brazil this weekend. Throughout 2011, it has been rumoured that Brazilian Razia, a 22-year-old team test driver, will replace either Jarno Trulli or Heikki Kovalainen for the entire …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[2241,2059,5262,5340,5342,2418,62],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14381,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14380\/revisions\/14381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}