Multiple GP2 Series race-winner and Renault test driver Lucas Di Grassi looks to be in pole position to secure the seco♎nd seat at F1 2010 newcomer Manor Grand Prix alongside Toyota refugee Timo Gl🍨ock next year, team principal John Booth has hinted.

Manor - which is expected to be officially re-launched as Virgin F1, with title sponsorship from billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson's Virgin Group - is widely regarded as being the dark horse amongst the new teams set to swell the field next season♊, having quietly got on with preparations and progress whilst its rivals have been seeking the headlines.

Having already signed up the highly-rated Glock, slotting Di Grassi in alongside the German would give Manor a very solid driver line-up indeed for its maiden campaign at the highest level. What's more, the 25-year-old already knows the Sheffield-based outfit after having competed for them in the F3 Euroseries four years ago, finishing fourth in the title chase - behind only Lewis Hamilton and Adrian Sutil, and ahead of Sebastian Vettel - and triumphing in the blue riband end-of-season Macau outing.

In three seasons i🐎n the GP2 feeder category, Di Grassi has never finished lower than third in the championship -with three different teams - and the man himself rates his chances of F1 graduation in 2010 as 'good', whilst Booth contends that the Brazilian's glory in Ma😼cau in 2005 was 'the highlight of my racing career - a superb win'.

"Hopefully, we should be able to announce the second driver in a couple of weeks," the Englishman told the South China Morning Post. "There is a 💖possibility he may ha💯ve won the Macau Grand Prix before..."

Di Grassi aside, the only other drivers Booth could feasibly be referring to are Mike Conway - who triumphed in the Far Eastern Portuguese enclave in 2006, and is due to test for Mercedes Grand Prix at Jerez early in December - and Super Aguri F1 refugee Takuma Sato, who is still seeking a way back onto the grid following the collapse of the Honda satellite operation early last year. On the Virgin rumours, meanwhile, he wo🐓uld give nowhere near as much away.

"I couldn't possibly comment on that," Booth stressed. "In the next two weeks there 🐻will ♚be an announcement on the commercial tie-up of the company."