» Chandhok won’t be drawn on theories

Karun Chandhok has refused to join in the speculation surrounding Christian Klien’s promotion to the role of racing driver in place of Sakon Yamamoto, the very man who replaced him in the Hispania Racing driver’s seat at the German Grand Prix.

Yamamoto’s absence has been put down to a bout of “food poisoning”, according to team boss Colin Kolles, and questions were raised when the team elected to replace Yamamoto with Klien as opposed to Chandhok, who was considerably more familiar with the 2010 car.

More interesting were suggestions from Kolles that Yamamoto may not recover in time for the next round in his home country of Japan, in a fortnight’s team.

This in turn has led to conspiracy theories that Yamamoto’s absence might actually be due to his rumoured $5 million in sponsorship having dried up, but Chandhok was offering no comment to support this idea.

“I haven’t spoken to Sakon. I have no idea if he is sitting on the toilet or not,” he laughed.

Yamamoto certainly appeared to have recovered remarkably well, and was spied as an active observer in the team’s garages this weekend, although no doubt he would have preferred to be in the car than not.

[Original image via Formula1.com]