Bruno Senna has said that he is still "working on" his plans for the 2012 Formula One season, but does not feel that his time in F1 has ended just yet, despite losing his race seat with the Renault squad to Romain Grosjean.
Senna was drafted in to the second seat at Renault in place of Nick Heidfeld midway through the 2011 season, in a desperate bid from the team to turn around their fortunes.The move was not entirely successful, with Senna only scoring two points in the eight races that he took part in.
And the Brazilian, the nephew of three-time F1 champion Ayrton Senna, has now lost his race drive after the Renault squad announced that Romain Grosjean would partner Kimi Raikkonen in 2012.
But despite the loss of his race drive, and the apparent lack of available seats elsewhere on the grid, Senna is still optimistic of finding a drive for next season.
"I don't know yet – I'm still working on next season, but as I said I think it's looking much better than last season at this same time and let's hope we can have good news," he told the Norwich Advertiser this week.
"It's difficult to say what's going to happen, but I'll always have Lotus [Renault] in my heart."
He also remained thankful to the team for giving him the chance to drive in 2011, despite now being out of a drive.
"It has been pretty amazing to be honest," he gushed regarding his 2011 season, "I mean, just to get a real chance in Formula One, and these guys gave me that chance to be in a much better position than I was at this time last year, and even in July."
He added: "They gave me a great chance to prove what I can do and on quite a few occasions I have been very competitive, so it's good to know that in a competitive car I can turn it out in Formula One and I think I'm looking forward to next year."
Asked for his best parts of the season, he went on: "The Belgian GP was good, Monza was nice to score my first points, Singapore was good in terms of my performance compared to my team-mate.
"And I think in Brazil we nailed qualifying – that was pretty awesome and I guess we showed some good speed.
"It's always special to race your home race. It’s a very different sensation when you have all the fans rooting for you and you always want to do well in your home race."
Senna's hopes of a race seat for 2012 now seem limited. Force India and Toro Rosso already have a wealth of driver options for their two seats, while the only other confirmed vacancies are at Williams and Senna's former team HRT.
The Brazilian may alternatively choose to sign up as a reserve driver for a frontrunning team, much as he did at the start of 2011 with Renault.
"In F1 some years more people go and there are other years where no one changes, so it's good to see some drivers getting a chance," he mused on the current driver marker.
"I think we need to see more younger drivers getting a real chance in Formula One though, to – let's say – freshen it up."
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