James Rossiter, a British driver in the FIA’s world endurance championship, will test Force India’s newly-launched 2013 car next week.
Now 29, a few years ago Rossiter was a Honda and Super Aguri tester and almost signed up with the ill-fated USF1 as a race driver.
Today, as well as racing Lotus sports cars, he works with Force India in the Silverstone based team’s driver simulator.
Rossiter is getting his chance to test the new VJM06 not because he is a candidate to race in 2013, but because Force India is heading to Jerez with only one confirmed driver — Paul di Resta.
Citing deputy team boss Bob Fernley, Reuters correspondent Alan Baldwin said on Twitter that Rossiter has been enlisted to "help them (the team) out with some of the testing".
Germany’s motorsport-total.com reported that, similar to Pedro de la Rosa’s Ferrari outing next week, Rossiter’s main task at Jerez will be to collect correlation data for the simulator over half a day of running.