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Virgin signs new reserve driver

Andy Soucek will join Virgin racing after a successful test with Williams last year © Sutton Images

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Virgin Racing has announced that Formula 2 champion Andy Soucek has signed as its test and reserve driver for the 2010 season.

Soucek, who won the inaugural Formula 2 championship last year, impressed during the young driver tests in December when he drove for Williams. He will attend each grand prix with the team, as well as continuing to race in other series. It is expected that he will make his Virgin debut when pre-season testing resumes in Barcelona on Thursday.

"I am thrilled to be joining Virgin Racing," he said. "This role offers me a great opportunity to prepare myself for the Formula One environment, which is naturally where my longer-term ambitions lie. I look forward to learning from Timo [Glock] and Lucas [di Grassi] as well as soaking up as much information as possible from engineering meetings and time on the simulator. It is exciting and very motivating to be part of a new structure in such a challenging sport and I hope that my experience can contribute a great deal to the development of the car and team in order to help us progress as quickly as possible."

Team principal John Booth said: "We are delighted to welcome Andy to Virgin Racing. He had a very good season in Formula 2 last year and a positive test with Williams. He is certainly someone we have been keeping a close eye on as we believe he has a great deal of potential. We expect him to be a real asset to our development programme with the VR-01 and at the same time he provides the experience we need should he be required to deputise for one of the race drivers at short notice. We are pleased to have finalised our driver line-up and we look forward to having Andy alongside us in Barcelona later this week so he can spend some valuable familiarisation time with the team."

Soucek is widely rumoured to be replacing previously announced reserve driver Alvaro Parente whose expected funding failed to materialise.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.