Romain Grosjean's return to Formula 1 with the Lotus Renault GP team is a fitting reward for DAMS for all the work the French squad put in in 2011.

Romain's fantastic season began with the teams and drivers titles in the Asian GP2 Series; it continued with several victories throughout the year and the title in the main GP2 Series.

Romain's work with DAMS benefited both parties and the logical outcome is his seat with LRGP in Formula 1. He learned a lot during his collaboration with DAMS in his role as team leader, and he was also heavily involved on the technical side.

The whole team is delighted and would like to wish Romain the same success with Kimi Raïkkönen in F1 as he enjoyed in GP2.

Jean-Paul Driot, CEO: "I'm very proud to have personally contributed to relaunching Romain's career as I've always believed in his enormous potential. The full financial investment we made with the help of Mercuria helped him to win the GP2 title and to find himself back where he belongs - in Formula 1!

In addition, this nomination completes what is already a brilliant list of drivers for whom DAMS was the springboard to Formula 1, in particular Nakajima, Kobayashi and D'Ambrosio in the last four years, and a total of more than twenty-two drivers since the founding of the DAMS team."