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From GMM

Narain Karthikeyan is pushing for "an Indycar test", the German language Speed Week reports.

This week, we reported that while HRT is to keep Pedro de la Rosa at the wheel in 2013, the fate of Indian Karthikeyan is much less clear.

After his initial F1 foray ended after a single season with Jordan in 2005, Karthikeyan was establishing a career in Nascar in 2010 when the opportunity to return to F1 arose.

Now, he is "seeking an Indycar test", Mathias Brunner reported in Speed Week, adding that "negotiations with different teams" are currently taking place.

Narain Karthikeyan. (Photo: HRT F1 Team)

UPDATE

On Friday, Narain Karthikeyan says he actually deserves a better F1 seat.

"Right now I would like to stay with HRT for 2013 as we can expect more progress with proper infrastructure which has been in place now," Karthikeyan told the Indian Express. "I think it will be decided over the winter once the season is through."

Asked if he would like a Sahara Force India seat, the Indian added: "I would definitely like the possibility since I have clearly proved that I have the speed to deserve a shot higher up the grid. But having said that, I think they have their own plans as always so for now I am concentrating on finishing this season on a strong note."

You should be. That's why we've put together this massive Used Car Buying Guide.

The stories we hear every other day about people getting “screwed” are disconcerting and quite frankly, frightening.

In my time as a consumer counselor at the Automobile Protection Association (APA), I heard stories that would make even the manliest of man's skin crawl. How about having your credit card taken from you along with the keys to your old trade-in car, then being told to leave the premises with the “new” used car when it won't start?

Recently, a colleague of mine came across a private ad promoting a service on a very popular website to erase trouble codes from your car. The text in the ad states that having the codes and subsequent lights erased for the instrument cluster will help increase the resale value of your car.

I also recall stories from my days at the APA where a well-known dealer had a huge shop full of people paid to roll back odometers.

Put the two together, and as a consumer, you could be purchasing something that on the surface has 80,000 km and is trouble-free when in fact you'll have bought a 150,000-km car packed with malfunctioning systems. The catch is that you'll have paid the same price...

We at Auto123 have put together a ginormous Used Car Buying Guide to help you with the process. Tips and advice are always so tedious, time consuming and feel like work to go through: I know, I'm not one to read user manuals either.

In the case of a used car purchase, it's a one-in-four-or-so-year type of deal. I think we should all sit and read through the guide, make some notes, learn a few things, and do everything we can to avoid serious and very costly situations.

Photo: Sébastien D'Amour

The Firestone Indy Lights Series officials have made public their 2013 schedule that will feature a diverse line up of ovals, road and street circuits and new additions with Pocono Houston and a return to Mid-Ohio.

As does the IZOD IndyCar Series, the season will open March 23-24 on the streets of St. Petersburg and the season finale will once again be hosted at Auto Club Speedway, Oct. 18-19.

Tristan Vautier, 2012 Champion Firestone Indy Lights Serie. (Photo: Sam Schmidt Motorsports)

All event weekends will be run in conjunction with the IZOD IndyCar Series; the first of five ovals being the Freedom 100 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 24.

2013 Firestone Indy Lights Schedule

March 23-24 St. Petersburg - street course
April 6-7 Barber Motorsports Park - road course
April 20-21 Long Beach - street course
May 24 Indianapolis Motor Speedway - oval
June 14-15 Milwaukee Mile - oval
June 22-23 Iowa Speedway- oval
July 6-7 Pocono International Raceway- oval
July 12-13 Toronto - street course
Aug. 3-4 Mid-Ohio- road course
Aug. 31-Sept. 1 Baltimore - street course
Oct. 5-6 Houston - street course
Oct. 18-19 Fontana - oval

In addition to the Hyundai Genesis coupe we talked about last month, ARK Performance is customizing a Veloster hatchback for the 2012

Volkswagen Group of America's electronics research laboratory is teaming up with Silicon Valley's Plug and Play Tech Center to create an incubator for next-generation automotive technologies.

Stanford Ovshinsky, an inventor and founder of Energy Conversion Devices who dedicated his life to finding alternative forms of energy, died Wednesday of cancer at his home in suburban Detroit. He was 89.

A fund that covers medical costs for GM's unionized retirees said its funding shortfall widened last year partly as a result of the declining value of its investments in GM, government documents show.

Also in this episode: The DeltaWing race car flips out at Road Atlanta, and a rough European economy opens up options for American

A federal judge in California tossed out a suit challenging the use of Albert Einstein's image in a General Motors advertisement, a Detroit newspaper reported today.

At times it seems that there is a vast and well-coordinated conspiracy against fun. Come up with something bold, unique and thrilling, and bureaucrats and regulators will come out of the woodwork to tell you why it is illegal.

If you're going bench racing, you may as well go all the way. That's why for this edition we're checking in on super SUVs with more than 500 hp. Price is no option and fuel mileage should range from laughable to sad.

GM is frustrating the hell out of Wall Street.

General Motors said it will hire 3,000 Hewlett-Packard employees as part of its ongoing effort to bring most information-technology work back in-house.

New vehicle sales in Thailand jumped by 52.5% year-on-year to 132,680 units in September, from 87,012 in the same month a year earlier, according to data released by the Federation of Thai Industries.

Italian union sources maintain the upcoming meeting between Fiat CEO, Sergio Marchionne and Italian labour bodies to detail a new business plan for the automaker, will not see plant closures unveiled.

BMW plans to build a new assembly plant in Brazil, tapping into the growing market for luxury cars in Latin America's largest economy, "We are on track and will now submit an investment plan with the Brazilian government," finance chief Friedrich...

BMW plans to build a new assembly plant in Brazil, tapping into the growing market for luxury cars in Latin America's largest economy.

Valeo presented a number of major innovations at the Paris Motor Show recently. Ian Henry, just-auto/QUBE analyst, spoke with Patrick Sega, Transversal Projects Director for Group R&D at Valeo about some of these innovations. Here, we report on the new electric supercharger.

Chevrolet plans to end production of the 2013 Corvette in February and idle the sport car's assembly plant in Bowling Green, Ky., for six months as it retools for the highly anticipated all-new model.