Doornbos 'down but not out' after Jordan snub.

Robert Doornbos has admitted to being 'overwhelmed' by the news that the Jordan team had opted for Narain Karthikeyan and Tiago Monteiro as its driver line-up in 2005, having felt that he was close to a deal to race this year.

The Dutchman had been in talks with Jordan either side of its take-over by Alex Shnaider's Midland Group, and was confident of extending his 2004 testing role into a full race seat ahead of next month's Australian Grand Prix. Last week's driver announcement, which confirmed the reunion of new sporting director Trevor Carlin with former junior team members Karthikeyan and Monteiro, thus came as a surprise to Doornbos, who now finds himself with just the second Minardi berth as a viable race option for 2005.

"When the [Jordan] news reached me on Thursday morning, I was completely overwhelmed by it," he told his personal website, "In the last few months, my management team has gone 'flat out' to secure me a race drive with the team and, last week, we actually had all the necessary ingredients together to finalise the deal. Though the final decision was of course with the team, I was always pretty confident to be on the grid in Melbourne. Now [Colin] Kolles and Carlin have decided to choose Karthikeyan and Monteiro, so we have to go for Plan B."

Without revealing exactly what 'Plan B' might be, Doornbos admitted that he would be content to remain involved with Jordan in a testing capacity - despite the weekend news that Russia's Roman Rusinov would be conducting some development duties with the team - whilst possibly looking for a race seat in another series.

"At this moment, I want to keep focused on F1 for 2005," the FIA F3000 race winner commented, "My management team has already started talks with Jordan GP for the possibility of the test drive, but we're also looking for future opportunities with other teams. If 2005 does not work out, we'll postpone our aim to 2006.

"In the last couple of days, I've also received several offers from other series, but my feeling says to stick to F1 for the moment. In boxing terms, we might have gone down in Round 1, but we're definitely not knocked out for 2005!"

Doornbos returned to his homeland before the weekend, claiming that he would be investigating no fewer than four other options for 2005 with his management and sponsors.