INDIA’S Karun Chandhok will partner Brazilian Bruno Senna, nephew of the late Ayrton, at Hispania for the 2010 Formula One season, the Spanish team announced yesterday.

“We complete the driver’s team line-up with the Indian Karun Chandhok at the wheel of the car for our first ever season,” said team director Colin Kolles.

“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.”

Chandhok, 26, has enjoyed a less than spectacular career in his three years in GP2, with one race victory to his name in both 2007 and 2008.

He finished 10th in the drivers’ standings in 2008 and was 18th in 2009.

The Campos Meta team announced on Wednesday (March 3) that they had changed their name to Hispania to signify “a new birth for our Formula One ambitions” and to highlight “the incredible effort that is going on behind the scenes to ensure we make a successful debut in Bahrain on 14 March,” according to Kolles.

The new outfit was founded by ex-driver Adrian Campos and is financed by Spanish investor Jose Ramon Carabante, but their preparations had fallen behind schedule and doubts had been raised about their readiness for Bahrain.

The feasibility of an Indian Grand Prix has long been discussed by competition organisers the International Automobile Federation (FIA) but the race is yet to appear on the F1 calendar.