Two brave stand-in performances for Fisichella Motorsport International, including putting the car on pole for the team in Istanbul, have not been enough to secure Ireland’s Adam Carroll a drive for the remainder of this season.
Instead FMI has announced the signing of Estonia’s Marko Asmer to permanently fill the seat vacated by Adrian Valles’ move to BCN Competicion in May.
Carroll stepped in with just a few days’ notice on his former team’s behalf, coming eighth in the Istanbul sprint race and thus putting himself on pole for the feature race. An early gearbox failure, however, forced his retirement.
In Monaco his weekend was frustrating – disrupted by an accident during practice courtesy of Andreas Zuber, then his sprint race ended early as one of a number of retirements when an incident saw the field come to a complete halt on the circuit.
In the feature race he was forced to a second-lap retirement due to a clutch failure. Subsequently FMI team principal Paulo Coloni acknowledged that neither retirement had been his fault.
Asmer, a 23-year-old British F3 champion and BMW Sauber test driver, competed in GP2 for Minardi Piquet Sports last season, coming 17th. He had his first opportunity to come to grips with the FMI set-up during the recent test session at the Paul Ricard circuit.
He said: “I’m totally delighted to get this chance. With only one day of testing this car it’s certainly going to be a challenge but I’ll grab it with both hands and give my all. I’m itching to race: bring on Magny-Cours!”
Paolo Coloni, FMI team principal, added: “We are very happy to welcome Marko to the team. It will give him a good opportunity to race competitively alongside his F1 testing duties.”