{"id":15109,"date":"2012-02-03T07:03:50","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T12:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=15109"},"modified":"2012-02-03T07:03:50","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T12:03:50","slug":"karthikeyan-completes-2012-grid-with-hrt-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/karthikeyan-completes-2012-grid-with-hrt-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Karthikeyan completes 2012 grid with HRT deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HRT, the Spanish team that until now had the final vacancy on the 2012 grid, has finally completed its race driver lineup by signing Narain Karthikeyan.<\/p>\n<p>The Indian began last year&#8217;s championship with the back-of-the-grid outfit before he was replaced by Red Bull protege Daniel Ricciardo.<\/p>\n<p>But with Australian Ricciardo moving to Toro Rosso for 2012, 35-year-old Karthikeyan &#8211; who briefly returned for his home race in India late last season &#8211; has taken back his full-time seat.<\/p>\n<p>The news is a blow to Vitantonio Liuzzi, who had acknowledged that a driver with higher-paying sponsors could oust him for 2012 despite his long-term contract.<\/p>\n<p>Karthikeyan will be Pedro de la Rosa&#8217;s teammate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It has taken a lot of hard work to make this happen but I am absolutely elated to feature on the 2012 grid with HRT F1 team,&#8221; he said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>De la Rosa will begin HRT&#8217;s pre-season preparations at Jerez next week, before Karthikeyan drives at the second test, at Barcelona.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HRT, the Spanish team that until now had the final vacancy on the 2012 grid, has finally completed its race driver lineup by signing Narain Karthikeyan. The Indian began last year&#8217;s championship with the back-of-the-grid outfit before he was replaced by Red Bull protege Daniel Ricciardo. But with Australian Ricciardo moving to Toro Rosso for &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,5340,842,2327,271,1386],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15110,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15109\/revisions\/15110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}