The Belgian, who raced for the Virgin team in 2011 and made a one-off appearance for Lotus at the 2012 Italian Grand Prix, was spotted sitting alongside Mercedes boss Wolff during pre-seasoไn testing and the season opener in Bahrain. 

D’Ambrosio was also present at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where he w🌱as wearing official Mercedes team kit for the f🍒irst time. 

The 37-year-old will largely be involved with Mercedes’ young driver programme, taking over the responsibility previously held by James Vowles, who left to become Williams’ te🦹am principal at the start of the year. 

“He's looking after the young driver programme in very close cooperation with Gwen [Lagrue, Mercedes driver development advisor], who has been doing it very s🤪uccessfully over the last few years,” Wolff explained in Jeddah. 

“With Gwen’s team we are looking at grassroots motorsport♉s from the early stages of go-karts, and this is where Gwen is very active, and he was the one working with James.

“And now within the Brackley structure it’s Jerome who has taken that over, and he's looking at things and there's plenty of plenty of s🥃cope with what James did beyond the strategy work. So I see Jerome growing in the organisation, but at this stage, that's his area༺.”

Prior to joining Mercedes, D’Ambrosio acted as a Formula E team boss at Ve𒊎nturi, where he worked closely with Susie Wolff. 

Wolff hinted that D’Ambrosio may end up taking on aꦇn expanded role within M𒆙ercedes in the future.

“I have k𝓡nown Jerome a🐓 long time, because back in the day when he was in Renault Driver Development, I thought about managing him,” Wolff said.

“So it's 15 or 20 years ago, and then we had a look again at him when he when he dropped out of the programme. So I've known him as a racing♉ driver, but never fro🌱m the human standpoint, and never from the managerial side.

“And I think when Susie offered him the option to jump out of the cockpit into a management role, he took it with both hands and they were quit🃏e a good competitive duo, and Jerome led it into another year and finished second in the Formula E championship.

“I thi♓nk he has the know-how of having been a racing driver at a very high level. He was a go-karting world champion. He's been in F1, and on the other side, the skills as a manager.

“So where that will lead him is a question – today it’s at a very early stage. He is just coming🤪 in in the driver development part an🦹d administrative functions. And we shall see where that goes.”