Pedro de la Rosa and Lewis Hamilton will have to wait until mid-December until McLaren announces who will be racing alongside Fernando Alonso in the 2007 season. Both de la Rosa and Hamilton will be driving in McLaren’s winter testing which starts at the end of this month in Barcelona.
“We will announce our decision sometime before Christmas,” Martin Whitmarsh told Speed TV. “Clearly Lewis is a strong defender and so is Pedro. We’re not looking anywhere else.”
The McLaren chief executive was then asked what he thought about putting the rookie Hamilton in the race-seat next to Alonso. “It’s a classic we are damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” he admitted. “If we put him in there will be those that wish to criticise us. How can you put a young driver like that up against Fernando, it’s a good way to ruin him’, and if we don’t it’ll be ‘how can you squander that talent for another year? That’s what we’re in business to take. We’ve been 10 years on the project, he is a tremendously exciting driver, he happens to be a very nice human being and a very grounded individual. He will be in F1 very soon, one way or another.”
