As part of his preparations to take the wheel at the inaugural Indian Grand Prix, Narain Karthikeyan will drive in the first practice session of next week's Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. Karthikeyan was forced to give up his race seat at the Hispania Racing Team to Australia's Daniel Ricciardo who is being evaluated by Red Bull and is a member of its junior driver program. Karthikeyan has not driven in an F1 race since the European Grand Prix in May and took part in the first practice session at the Singapore Grand Prix.

The Indian, who made his F1 debut in 2005 with Jordan, was able to set a lap just 0.046 seconds slower than Ricciardo's best effort in that session. Ricciardo, in turn, comfortably outpaced teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi in every other timed session and finished ahead of him in the race too.