Hispania's Indian Summer

Narain Karthikeyan hasn’t driven a formula one car in 3 years and indeed, hasn’t competed in a race since 2006 with Jordan, yet Hispania racing have signed the Indian who has the distinction of being India’s "first ever F1 driver" for a full blow contract in 2011. In addition, the team recently announced that it would not be re-signing the nephew of the late Ayrton Senna and will instead embark on a search for a partner for Narain in the coming weeks.

It seems an odd choice, not least of which because of the lack of recent experience of F1, but in addition the fact that Hispania already had access and history with a much better Indian driver in the form of Karun Chandhok, yet chose to ignore this talented, humorous and all round decent man. In fact, if being a nice bloke got you an F1 drive, Chandhok would be racing for Ferrari in 2011, but sadly this isn’t the case and instead he might well be watching from the sidelines, with the best offer on the table that of a reserve driver for one of the low grid teams, a real travesty to the mans talents. Instead, Hispania chose a man who is older, less experienced with modern F1 cars and but has one alluring appeal to his signing: Money.

It isn’t the first time a driver will have paid for his drive, but the fact that this is F1, the pinnacle of the motor sport industry in the 21st century should mean that only the very best, fastest, most talented drivers get to slip in to a cockpit come race weekend. But money talks and well, talent sometimes helps. In this case, its all about money and at least the team are honest about it.

Narain is said to be bringing a "substantial" sponsor to the team, one that will provide a large injection of cash that will help the team rise from the back of the grid to mid table respectability, one would hope, otherwise you may as well put a talented driver in the car if its just going to sit on the back row at every race it visits. Unless they have a large credit card provider or a car manufacturer lined up, the injection of cash might seem to them like a large amount, but it won’t be anything in comparison to the money garnered by McLaren and the likes.

And that’s part of the trouble here, despite going for a driver who can provide much needed cash, that cash won’t help them in 2011, not unless they have been secretly spending massive amounts of cash on the design and build of their car during 2010. And lets face it, their 2010 car was a dog, so if they start the year with that, they wont be going anywhere except, well, home on Saturday night, thanks largely to the re-implementation of the 107% rule.

So it could be 2012 before the new money has any positive effect on the team or its car, which means Narain better make sure he has a multi year deal or this could be pointless for him too.

Another worry is the leaving of FOTA, the Formula One Teams Association. Leaving it doesn’t make any difference to whether they can race in 2011, but it does add a further doubt in peoples minds and puts in to question whether this team will even be on the grid come March, let alone complete the season.