Merhi works for unnamed F1 team

Former F1 driver Roberto Merhi says he is unable to reveal which current team he performs simulator duties for.

The 29-year-old Spaniard raced for Marussia in 2015, but he now tells Marca sports newspaper that he remains involved with the sport.

"The team I work for in Formula 1 doesn't want me to say who they are," he said.

"Maybe during the year that will change but they told me they don't want other teams to ask me about it and things like that."

Merhi, who also races in the Asian Le Mans series, said his F1 role involves extensive work at the unnamed F1 team's factory over race weekends.

"We do a 'back to back' of the weekend, simulating it in parallel until qualifying when the car can no longer be touched anymore," he said.

Recently, Daniel Ricciardo said Merhi was among the very best drivers he raced against during his career in the junior categories.

"It's nice when one of the best drivers says something like that about you," he said.

"I also raced against Valttieri Bottas. The most aggressive in the race was me, but he (Ricciardo) was the best of the three especially with overtaking and Bottas was perhaps the worst in the race. In fact, in F1 you can still see that," said Merhi.

He is hoping F1 can get up and running again from July.

"In the team I work for, they want to come back to work in June and in July I think we could race again," he said.

About the author

Leopold

Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

Related topics