Marco Sørensen believed he had one foot in the door to become the second Dane to get a Formula One drive, but was thwarted by Carmen Jordá. In 2012 Marco signed as Lotus F1 development driver and raced with Lotus in the Formula Renault 3.5 World Series for two years, earning a number of pole positions, podiums and wins.
During the second half of the 2014 season, Sørensen switched to the GP2 championship and looked set for great things after winning the sprint race in Sochi driving for the unfancied MP Motorsport team. The following year Marco was promoted up the field when Carlin recruited his services, though after 8 races without a single points finish, the Danish driver left GP2 to concentrate on racing for Aston Martin in the WEC.
The cash hungry Lotus team were to benefit from Marco’s personal sponsor, Saxo Bank, whose logo was visible on the rear wing of the car. Speaking to Danish publication Ekstra Bladet, Marco reveals his bitterness about the way he was treated by Lotus and particularly how they favoured Carmen Jordá. “She was as much as 12 seconds a lap slower than me in the simulator,” reveals Sørensen, “and yet constantly in the spotlight. In the past two years I’ve spent 60 hours in the simulator, a similar amount of time to Kevin Magnussen, but I discovered I was just being exploited, so I decided to stop.”
Whilst the F1 dream is over for Marco, he is phlegmatic about the new owners of the Lotus team recruiting his countryman Kevin Magnussen. “I just did not have the $7.5 million that you need for a Formula 1 drive,” says Sørensen who is backing Magnussen to get the better of team mate Jolyon Palmer.
Not a great idea to slag of a previous team, you never know when you might need Renault on your side. As for ‘She was as much as 12 seconds a lap slower than me in the simulator,’ OK so that was the big gap what was the closest she got to your best time or you got to her best time?
Sorry just sounds like sour grapes. These days F1 cars don’t need the strength they used to to get the most out of them. Problem is just in the numbers, my guess is 90-95% of kids starting cart racing are boys. So statistically not many girls/women will make it towards F1. Pity really as would be great to have a more balanced field.
Eh, I don’t know. Dude’s spent a lot of time, effort and money to get into F1 and in the end is beat by someone he says was up to 12 seconds a lap slower. I’m not surprised he’s bitter over the whole thing.
he is making up numbers. the title of the article should be coalled something else, as people who don’t read whole articles will now judge her even more.
Exploited? Driver with underwhelming cv has sponsor pay money to get some simulator time.
Whatever was he expecting? Should have talked to Charles Pic – at least Marco appeared to get what he paid for?
On the positive side of life, great to see Pascal getting the nod at Manor, +1 for Toto (shocked to hear myself say that) 🙂
But she’s fit…………….
Lol, “as much as 12 seconds a lap slower” is a ridiculous claim! Marco is just mad because in the pay driver world looks matter! If he had better driving skills he would be in F1 (-8
He was lucky Monisha did not offer him a contract including a guaranteed race seat in 2015….
Søre grapes.
Exactly, just like TBK Lite only gets 10 posts a month kind of a farce. This is really stupid.