After weeks of rumors, dropping hints and uncertainty, Karun Chandhok as confirmed by the HRT F1 team as their second driver.

HRT F1, which was originally named Campos Meta, will be the final team on the grid and the only team that has not tested their car yet. Karun will be partnering with Bruno Senna, Ayrton Senna’s nephew. Oddly enough, Bruno who was confirmed before Karun get’s the number 21 and Karun get’s the number 20 on his car.

With two rookies, a car designed by Dallara, who have not built an F1 car in a couple of decades and have not done any testing, I’m not going to expect instant results from the team. Having said that, Lotus F1 and Virgin Racing, the other two new teams have not had an amazing outing either.

Look for HRT F1 to make progress and possibly “steal” a few points later in the year.

Here is the second Indian to make it into F1 and for your viewing pleasure, I have the video from the launch. And if you did not know, Bruno, Karun’s team mate at HRT F1 was also his team mate in GP2 at iSport a couple of years ago.

Earlier in the week, we reported that Force India F1, amongst management changes had also decided to go with a Mercedes drive train for next year. Earlier this year, Mallya said that he was retaining his drivers for 2009, but all that seems to be out the window.

Mallya reiterated at the deal’s announcement that the team does not intend “at present” to change its current line-up of Italian Giancarlo Fisichella and Germany’s Adrian Sutil.

However the billionaire businessman did not rule out the prospect that other candidates might be tested for the two race seats.

“They (McLaren) will recommend what they believe to be in the best interests of my team and I have to decide. And I would be hard pressed to ignore their advice,” Mallya said.

“The first thing is building the car. If we don’t have a car then there’s no point having a driver…It’s already pushing the envelope a little bit, so we need to focus on the car. The driver comes next and we will have these conversations.”

But going back to the drivers, Mallya made it clear that winning was the only thing on his mind and he would do whatever it takes.

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With the GP2 series wrapping up, Karun finished a distant 10th, but let that not fool you. He had some amazing races, fought and for a lot of the races, luck was not with him.

A few days ago, I wrote about why Karun should not take the tester role at Force India F1 and he agrees.

It’s nice to hear that he would like me to be involved in the team and from a patriotic and emotional angle, that’s great. But at the end of the day, races and careers have to be tackled using head and not heart, I would love to test with a top team and I am in discussion with some of the teams further up the field, apart from Force India,” he said.

I’m not sure on how people dig this stuff up, but someone decided to pick a quote from Mallyas statement from over a year ago and have figured that Karthikeyan could be back.

Force India boss Vijay Mallya has indicated that his Silverstone-based team will not be changing their line-up ahead of next season but an earlier promise by Mallya that by 2009 the team would field a countryman could yet be honoured.

While Karthikeyan is keeping his silence, personally I think Karun Chandok has a way better shot. He is in the GP2 series, which happens to be the feeder series for F1 and he has been performing pretty well. His team iSport international is currently leading the team score and his sponsor Red Bull racings junior team has at least one seat available for next year.

Karthikeyan or Chandok? What do you guys think?

After winning the race at Spa and bagging the award for the most improved driver for 2007 in the GP2 series, Karun Chandok was invited to test for iSport International after the season ended. Like many predicted the tests went well and Karun has signed up with iSport for the 2008 season.

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