Petrov left waiting over Renault future

Vitaly Petrov has been left to sweat on his future with the Renault F1 team after failing to be named on the official entry list for the 2011 season published by the FIA.

Only Robert Kubica was named by Renault as one of its drivers with Petrov still unsure on whether or not he will be retained for a second year. The likes of Nick Heidfeld and Nico Hulkenberg are available if Renault elected to bring in a new driver while fellow Russian Mikhail Aleshin has also targeted a race seat after his appearance in the Young Driver test in Abu Dhabi [See separate story HERE].

While Petrov showed flashes of speed in his debut season, the Russian also suffered from inconsistency throughout the year, with a number of high-profile errors and incidents on track.

With that in mind, Petrov needs to produce the goods on a consistent basis if he is to show himself worthy of a second chance.

"It's not done yet," Renault F1 majority shareholder Gerard Lopez told ESPNF1. "As much as we have been happy during the course of the season, we were a little bit disappointed with the results coming towards the end of the season.

"The one criticism we had of him and still have, to some extent, is not his pure speed but his ability to put together a whole weekend in a very focused and concentrated way. If anything in Abu Dhabi, he showed that if he wants to, he can. There is no reason why Vitaly can't be a top five or six driver throughout his career but we haven't made a final decision.

"Abu Dhabi did a lot for us to re-consider his position and we'd like to be able to sign him up but he's been away so we have to sit down with him, look him in the eye and see if he can do what he did in Abu Dhabi during the race throughout the season during practice, qualifying and the race."

Kubica will hope to impress again for the team next year after a strong season in 2010 and the Pole admitted it was a difficult choice for Renault to decide on who will be his partner.

"This is a difficult subject to get right," he told formule1.nl. "Of course the team would benefit from a more experienced driver. As a rookie you find that Formula One is not as easy as it first seemed. You also have to say that there have been newcomers who have performed strongly right from the start.

"As for my team-mate next year, the team is in the best position to know what it wants and what position they are in."