Lopez critical of US F1 team

The 26-year-old Argentine was announced as a US F1 driver in January but just one month later he was in talks for the reserve seat at Campos (now HRT) with growing uncertainty over US F1's ability to make the grid.

Lopez's manager, Felipe McGough, hit out at US F1 team boss Ken Anderson in the wake of the team's withdrawal at the beginning of March, and Lopez himself now says he believes he was misled by the team.

"I find it hard to say that we did it wrong," he told a news conference hosted by the Argentine Automobile Club. "I think we put too much trust in what people were telling us.

"As soon as I arrived in Charlotte in February, I realised that everything they were saying was not true. What happened to us was unthinkable: in 60 years of Formula 1 it never happened that a team signed up and didn't make it. They hid things from us."

Lopez is still hopeful of breaking into Formula 1 and is targeting a testing role.

"My idea is to go on, not lay my head down," he said. "Everybody knows what happened. We are going to go on, even though as of today we have no firm project. Of course it's not the same anymore. There have been many falls and I don't know how long I can take it, or my family.

"It [testing] would be the easiest thing because racing in F1 is almost impossible this year. At some point I will be making the decisions."