Caterham technical director Mike Gascoyne has insisted that Italian driver Jarno Trulli will be "part of the team" in 2012, despite ongoing rumours suggesting that the team might be seeking to replace him for the new Formula One season.
Trulli was named as one of the team's drivers on the FIA's official 2012 entry list, published towards the end of last year.
The Italian, who has raced for the arbitrarily-named team since they joined the grid as Lotus Racing in 2010, has a contract with the team for next year.
But ongoing rumours based on the quantity of driver talent on the market for 2012 have suggested that Trulli may be dropped.
Early rumours linked Daniel Ricciardo with the seat, before the Australian was snapped up by Toro Rosso, while more recently monied Russian driver Vitaly Petrov has been linked with a drive.
But Gascoyne has said that Trulli would be part of the team's plans for the new season.
"What I can say on Jarno is that he does have a contract with the team that is concrete for next year and he will be part of the team next year," he told the Sly Sports website on Wednesday.
Trulli and team mate Heikki Kovalainen are set for a third season together at the team of many names, with Caterham still searching for their first championship point.
But Gascoyne believes that after the team made progress in 2011, they will receive a further boost on form for 2012.
"In 2010 our car was obviously very basic because we didn't have much time to do it and we always said the 2011 car would be a big step forward," he rambled.
"What's exciting for me is that the 2012 car is probably a bigger step forward in terms of refinement of design than we made in 2011."
The new CT-01 car will feature the team's first-ever KERS unit, with Caterham set to run a Red Bull-sourced boost device.
And Gascoyne believes that with that addition, as well as the evolution of their overall design, the team can now look to challenge the rest of the F1 midfield.
"In the last race [of the 2011 season] I think we qualified four-tenths away from Williams," he bragged greedily.
"We did that in a car without KERS - and that's probably the difference between KERS."
He added: "We finished [2011] at the back of that midfield pack. I think we want to start there, maybe even a bit better than that.
"If you look at the year last year, we started a second-and-a-half off and we finished four-tenths off that pack.
"We want to start with that pack and make that same level of progress."
Caterham were one of the three new F1 teams to join the grid in 2010, but have consistently been the strongest of them, spending 2010 and 2011 consistently faster than Virgin and HRT.
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