With Nick Heidfeld’s new BMW-Sauber deal looking secure, it is now increasingly likely that the German team’s current test and reserve driver Sebastian Vettel will be ‘loaned’ to Toro Rosso for a couple of years.

In the German press on Tuesday, neither STR co-owner Gerhard Berger nor BMW’s Mario Theissen vehemently ruled out the scenario unfolding in time for 2008.

“I know that Sebastian is looking for a place to race and that we could be an interesting place for him to come,” Berger is quoted as saying by Sport-Informations-Dienst.

Vettel, 19, is uniquely contracted both to BMW and Red Bull — with both companies claiming precedence over the other.

Berger insisted: “But so far we have held no concrete conversations with him.”

Theissen, meanwhile, told Blickpunkt Sport late on Monday that ‘loaning’ Vettel to another team for a year or two is a “conceivable scenario”.

But, along the same lines as Berger, he added: “The future is not decided yet.”

[GMM]

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