Force India F1 2008

Some good news, but mostly bad news, especially if you are an Indian Formula One fan.

The bad news first.

Narain Karthikeyan is leaving his test driver role at Williams in 2008. Nothing much to do there, is the reason. Due to the traction control ban in 2008, regular drivers - that is, Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima - would need a lot of time at the wheel during the tests, leaving no time at all for test drivers like Narain Karthikeyan.

Secondly, he has not been called by Vijay Mallya to test for Force India. Neither is Karun Chandok, it seems. Both have not been called to test the Force India car so far, and Karthikeyan thinks it is unlikely that he would get a last minute call from Vijay Mallya. He said that if they wanted to call him, they could have called him any time till now.

Which means we may end up seeing Narain racing full-time in A1GP - where he just had a lacklustre start in the first race.

Problems, problems, my friends.

I have been griping in this blog for the last two months about how something is wrong with the Force India plans. What I suspect is this:

Mallya wanted Narain Karthikeyan.

Karthikeyan wanted to see if he could manage a race drive with Williams. So he kept Mallya waiting.

Mallya did not like that.

Now Karthikeyan does not have a race seat at Williams, but has A1GP. He is still not sure about wanting a Force India seat. So has not tried to get it, and Mallya has not bothered to call.

We might end up the losers in all this. Bloody Force India F1 team without an Indian driver - Ha!

I want to see how Mallya would manage to handle the negative publicity of having a team on the grid named Force India, without an Indian driver. If that happens, I hope he has to kiss his Indian advertising revenue hopes goodbye.

Of course I may be wrong in all this, and Mallya may manage to pull off something at the last minute.

Meanwhile, other plans of Force India seem to be moving reasonably well.

The Force India team need to build up on their promising end to the 2007 season and start fighting for points more regularly, according to technical chief Mike Gascoyne.

Read more at Autosport and ITV-F1.com

Meanwhile, Adrian Sutil who did quite well last year, is pretty much confirmed at Force India. He says he is not looking to go anywhere else.

That’s about it for now.

Here’s wishing Karthikeyan all the best. Whoever he is with. I hope he does superbly in A1GP, the last thing I want to see is this chap fade away.

Filed under: Drivers