Gerard Lopez, boss of Luxembourg-based Genii Capital, owners of Lotus Renault GP, has said that Vitaly Petrov needs to change his approach and even move to the UK, if he is to retain his seat in 2011.

The Russian had a tough debut season, and while his drive in Abu Dhabi will be seen as one of the highlights, there were far too many mistakes, the youngster proving to be too hit and miss for some tastes.

With a number of drivers now focussing on the second seat at Renault, now renamed Lotus Renault GP, Gerard Lopez has advised Petrov that the drive is still his providing he makes some radical changes.

"I have always said that my preferred choice would be to keep Vitaly in the car," Lopez told Reuters. "I think the discussion to be had with Vitaly is not one about speed - our engineers tell us that he sure has the speed to compete. What he doesn't show in a consistent way is the capacity to focus on a complete weekend and deliver from first practice to the end of the race on Sunday. And that's what we have to discuss with him.

"Part of the discussion is that he needs to accept a certain change in life," he continued, "he needs to accept to move to the UK and be close to the factory. He needs to accept to be in an English-speaking environment all the time and if he accepts those things, and if we believe that through those things he can deliver consistency, then there's no question about who is going to be our second driver.

"If for some reason he thinks the things we are asking from him are not the things he wants to do, then for sure it's going to be a serious question who is going to be our second driver," he added. "We want him to succeed. We don't want him to be a guy that comes and just shows up and drives great one weekend and then nothing.

"I think detaching a little bit from his family, it's probably going to be tough for him sometimes," Lopez admitted, "but it's going to be very beneficial for him in terms of his career."

While Russia is an important market for his own company Genii and Proton owned Group Lotus, Lopez is adamant that this isn't enough to guarantee Petrov the seat.

"I haven't hidden the fact that Russia holds big promise to us commercially," he said. "But it's a shortcut to say it's just because of sponsorship that he is in the team. We believe it's a big market, and creating a Formula One star in that market has tremendous benefits to the team.

"But people in Russia are extremely demanding. They don't want a Russian driver that is going to qualify 17th or 18th and race up to 15th. That is of zero interest to the Russian market and is actually perceived as negative."

Lopez revealed that he and Petrov will meet up with team boss Eric Boullier in the coming weeks, the Frenchman currently resting after eye surgery.