The 26-year-old position as team-mate to fellow novice Bruno Senna was officially announced as Hispania unveiled their new car on Thursday.
Hispania is the new name for the former Campos team, whose position on the grid has been confirmed after a winter of battling to secure their future.
Team boss Colin Kolles said: "We have a platform for a strong 2010."
Chandhok has won two races in the last three years in the GP2 feeder series, in which he was Senna's team-mate in the iSport team in 2008 when the Brazilian was runner-up in the championship.
Kolles said: "We have been very impressed with Karun's performance in GP2. India is a great country. It will be great for the sport to have an Indian driver on the grid for the first Indian Grand Prix."
India is expected to host its first grand prix at a new track about 35 miles outside Delhi in 2011.
Hispania are using a car built by the Italian race-car constructor Dallara, who last built an F1 chassis in 1992 for the Scuderia Italia team.
Since then they have had success in Formula Three, IndyCars and other racing series.
The team will arrive in Bahrain for next weekend's season-opening race having had no testing and with two drivers with no experience of F1, the only team in that position.
They are the third new team on the grid this season, after Lotus and Virgin.
US F1 pulled out earlier this week but are hoping to race in 2011, and governing body the FIA rejected a bid by Serbian team Stefan GP to make a late entry.
Chandhok will be the second Indian driver to compete in F1 after Narain Karthikeyan took part in 19 races for Jordan in 2005.
A management reshuffle earlier this month saw co-founder Jose Ramon Carabante take 100% ownership of the team and his partner Adrian Campos replaced as team principal by Kolles.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment