Williams F1 Team looking to sign new protege

The Williams F1 Team look set to be signing a new protege to fill the currently vacant reserve driver seat that used to be filled by promoted race driver Valtteri Bottas.

(c) Octane Photographic

The Grove based squad are looking to sign a new driver that they can mould into a future F1 star. Bottas took part in the majority of the 2012 first practice sessions alongside test drivers before being promoted to a race seat for this season.

Despite having development driver Susie Wolff, her role has not directly replaced the one previously held by Bottas as the teams 'number three.' Wolff largely completes simulator work for the team but did have her first official test with the team at Silverstone last month.

Claire Williams - deputy team principal - was asked in a exclusive interview with AUTOSPORT if they were looking to sign a fresh new talent ready to be developed in to a future F1 driver. She replied: "Yes, there is. That's one of the great things about Williams, one of the things that we like to do is to pick up new talent we can bring in.

"Frank [Williams] loves bringing in new drivers and seeing who is out there, and he finds it exciting."

She admits that there is a vacant space needing to be filled: "We have just put Valtteri in the cockpit so that position is available. We are doing some diligence on who is out there and who is well-suited to joining the team."

The team ran Daniel Juncadella - a DTM driver for Mercedes - at the Silverstone Young Driver Test alongside Wolff and race driver Pastor Maldonado. The 21-year-old - who won the Formula 3 Euro Series in 2012 - impressed but is not likely to join the team as their reserve driver.

Williams admitted that the team would love to establish a proper young driver programme like those currently in use by Red Bull and Lotus; however the team needs to get the budget to go racing first before additional programmes are added. Despite this, rumours are circulating of a possible tie-up with GP2 team Russian Time which could see one of their drivers move to the legendary team.

She said: "We would like to do a proper young driver programme in the future but that's always about budget and we have got to make sure that the budget is in place and secure for the F1 team before we start looking at doing a comprehensive young driver programme like the likes of Lotus or Red Bull."

However she revealed that announcements will be made soon on the subject of young drivers: "We'd like to have a couple of drivers we can look at and there will be a couple of announcements about that soon."

Bottas has so far impressed since being promoted from the teams reserve driver role and manager and former racer Mika Hakkinen is working hard to secure his future at the team for beyond 2013. Despite not scoring a point he has been one of the stand-out rookies and has matched team-mate Pastor Maldonado.

With the team making steps forward with the FW35's development, the rest of the season is looking more promising for the team.