De la Rosa likely to race rest of F1 season

By Alan Baldwin

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Spanish stand-in Pedro de la Rosa can
expect to compete in the last four races of the Formula One
season after Sunday’s Turkish Grand Prix, McLaren team boss Ron
Dennis said on Saturday.

“Definitely Monza and most likely the rest of the season,”
Dennis told reporters on Saturday when asked about De la Rosa’s
future.

The Spanish test driver was promoted to the race seat at
the French Grand Prix in July after Colombian Juan Pablo
Montoya’s surprise announcement that he was moving to the
U.S.-based NASCAR series next year.

Dennis’s words appeared to rule out either Lewis Hamilton
or Gary Paffett, the two young Britons hoping to race for the
team next year, making their Formula One debuts this season.

Hamilton, 21, is leading the GP2 series, a feeder to
Formula One, and many in the paddock expect him to join
Spaniard Fernando Alonso in the McLaren lineup when the world
champion moves from Renault at the end of the year.

Dennis has said in the past that he believes Hamilton, a
McLaren protege for a decade, will be in Formula One next year
but he made clear on Saturday that the team would not be
accelerating his arrival.

“We are not in the business of developing grand prix
drivers, we are in the business of winning races,” he said when
asked why McLaren did not give Hamilton a race, given that they
are sure of third place in a championship they cannot win.

“We will always put the best available drivers in the cars.
The place to develop young drivers is not in the pressure of
grand prix racing,” added Dennis.

“For someone like Lewis we’d want thousands of kilometres
of testing under his belt, we’d want to feel very comfortable
that he fully understood all of the regulatory processes. We
don’t want to distract him from what he’s doing at the moment.”

Dennis said that both he and Mercedes motorsport head
Norbert Haug were keen to finalize their 2007 lineup before the
end of December, with the new car likely to be launched in
January.

McLaren want Kimi Raikkonen to stay with them next year but
the paddock rumor mill is convinced that the Finn will be
announced as a Ferrari driver at the Italian Grand Prix in two
weeks’ time.

“Clearly there are decisions yet to be taken by other teams
that have an influence on our own decisions,” said Dennis. “Not
all the driver moves have taken place…and we’re still very
much in control of our own destiny.”

Dennis said Hamilton’s future would not depend on him
winning the GP2 title.

“We’d love him to win but he has nothing more to prove,” he
said. “It would be nice for him to win but I don’t think it
will influence the decision that we will take.”