Marlon Stockinger to have his first F1 test session in April

Marlon Stockinger shared this morning that he will be having first seat time with the Lotus F1 car on April 2 at the Paul Ricard Ciruit in France. He is currently in the country for a short break to personally thank his Pinoy fans for the support that his team is getting and to also announce the progress that he has been making since he entered the roster of the Lotus Junior F1 team program.

The Filipino-Swiss race champion happily announced that he's been having a great time with Lotus' training program and is currently training hard for his goal of winning the 2013 season of Formula Renault 3.5 Series that's set to start this April 6. He also added that he has a great chance of being chose as one of the team's future F1 driver since 3 slots(2 official drivers and 1 test driver) will be open by the end of the program.

Although there are a total of 7 drivers in the training program, Thomas Stockinger, Marlon's father, proudly explained that there's a high probability of Marlon being drafted since Marlon's one of the two drivers that will be competing with the Lotus World Series Team. To add to that, Marlon also explained that there's also a possibility of him or any of the drivers under the program to be 'sold' to other teams.

Photo caption(L-R) Stockinger’s supportive parents, Thomas and Egin together with Marlon Stockinger and Globe Telecom's Bunny Aguilar

Stockinger is expecting to drive a total of 350km on the track and use up to 4 sets of new tires during the test session with the team's F1 car. After his April testing, he is scheduled to return for a Lotus F1 promo event in Manila on May 3-5, where Stockinger will be driving a Lotus F1 car in a yet to be announced venue in Metro Manila.

When asked about his favorite F1 driver and circuit he responded: "It's definitely Kimi (Raikkonen), for me, he's a legend and definitely has the character of an F1 driver." For his favorite circuit, the 21 year old driver stated: "Certainly Monaco (Circuit de Monaco), aside from being a nice and historical circuit, it gave me one of the best memories of my career"