Having one spare spot in his team for the upcoming campaign, Boullier is now forced to pick between several good drivers, including Kimi Raikkonen, Vitaly Petrov (the current racer for Renault F1 Team), Adrian Sutil and even Timo Glock. Nevertheless, since Raikkonen is by far the highest profiled competitor of them all, all the attention suddenly switched towards him.
As he is yet to announce his future plans in motor racing – a continuance of his current WRC career being another viable option – Raikkonen was publicly asked by Boullier, if one can can read between the lines, to have a meeting and discuss this potential move. According to the French manager, an eye-to-eye discussion will help him better evaluate Kimi's true desire to return to F1.
“I decided to tell some drivers that we will not carry on discussions with them, so we know wait and see - but Kimi remains one of our scenarios,” admitted Boullier in a recent interview with Autosport, hinting that Raikkonen is still one of his targets for the 2011 season.
“I have said many times that I want to meet with him first before we do anything more. I want to understand more about his wish to come back,” added the Renault team boss.
As for Petrov, Boullier admitted that there is still a lot of frustration inside the Renault garage over the constant mistakes the Russian is doing weekend in and weekend out, hinting that the recent GP2 graduate is yet to convince him that he deserves to stay on the team for next season.
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