Soucek joins Virgin as reserve driver

The 24-year-old Spaniard replaces Portuguese Alvaro Parente, whose deal with Virgin fell through after losing one of his sponsors.

Soucek had been actively working on a deal to secure an F1 seat, the Spaniard being linked previously with a move to the Campos Meta team.

"I am thrilled to be joining Virgin Racing," said Soucek. "This role offers me a great opportunity to prepare myself for the Formula 1 environment, which is naturally where my longer-term ambitions lie.

"I look forward to learning from Timo and Lucas as well as soaking up as much information as possible from engineering meetings and time on the simulator.

"I would like to thank John Booth and Nick Wirth in particular for the faith they have shown in me at this stage in my career.

"It is exciting and very motivating to be part of a new structure in such a challenging sport and I hope that my experience can contribute a great deal to the development of the car and team in order to help us progress as quickly as possible."

Soucek will attend the upcoming Barcelona test and will be standing by to deputise for race drivers Timo Glock or Lucas di Grassi if required.

"We are delighted to welcome Andy Soucek to Virgin Racing," said team principal John Booth. "He had a very good season in Formula 2 last year and a positive F1 test with Williams. He is certainly someone we have been keeping a close eye on as we believe he has a great deal of potential.

"We expect him to be a real asset to our development programme with the VR-01 and at the same time he provides the experience we need should he be required to deputise for one of the race drivers at short notice.

"We are pleased to have finalised our driver line-up and we look forward to having Andy alongside us in Barcelona later this week so he can spend some valuable familiarisation time with the team."