Louis Delétraz: “Winning F2 while keeping one foot in F1”

How did you arrive at Carlin?

After my trial gallop in F1 with Haas, the goal was to continue F2 to get closer to this long-term goal. Carlin is an attractive team, and not just because they won the title (Teams. Editor’s note) last year. I know the environment having made my first GP2 start there at the end of 2016. I have excellent memories of it. In addition, I will have the same engineer, Stuart King, as in 2016 at Fortec Motorsports with whom I almost won the Formula V8 3.5. We tested together with Carlin in Abu Dhabi and the runs went very well.

Given the rapprochement between Charouz and Sauber, we could have imagined you joining them again.

I have nothing at all against Charouz and I could have indeed continued the adventure alongside them, but the Sauber deal put me in a position that I could not accept. It made sense to have a Swiss in a Swiss junior team, but it didn't depend on me.

Besides F2, do you have any side projects?

I will not participate in other championships. Afterwards, I am looking for an F1 program, whether it is a simulator or a test driver role. There are discussions, but nothing is done. The main objective is to win F2 while keeping one foot in F1, and to continue learning by being integrated into a Grand Prix team, as I was able to do this season.

This interview was published in issue 2198 of AUTOhebdo, always available here.