Nascar Trucks the new GP2?

[Easy]

No. But...

Karthikeyan says he has a race seat with HRT next year. No comment from HRT yet, I assume they're waiting for the check to clear.

HYPERLINK TO RELEVANT INFORMATION:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/88821

D'Ambrosio, Karthikeyan in. Hulkenberg, Heidfeld out. Maybe Bernie is right about the new teams messing up the show. I like the bigger grids but 90% of last year I forgot Lucas DiGrassi was even in F1 and apparently Richard Branson did as well. Would anyone care (or even notice) if Virgin and/or HRT failed to show up?

[cameraman]

I have hopes that Lotus will greatly improve this year. Sounds like they might give the time & money spent on their new car. HRT is an underfunded joke. Virgin falls somewhere in-between.

[Easy]

I agree that Lotus/1Malaysia is a real GP outfit. Two winning drivers, a good technical director who works well with smaller budgets and an owner with a long term commitment. I respected Mike Gascoyne's approach of designing reliability over speed for the first season. You can't learn anything on the side of the road after 5 laps, especially in the test ban era.

Lotus/1Malaysia could make a massive leap this year. Trulli and Heikki will have their input in the car design, Williams gearboxes, Renault power and they'll have the FOM money for finishing 10th in the Constructors' points.

[pchall]

I'll root for them again. Even though we can argue over beers whether they are the pukka Team Lotus or not, it is nice to see the name in the results again.