Spyker are looking for a new driver to replace Christijan Albers, whose contract got terminated on Tuesday after one of his main sponsors missed a payment to the Silverstone-based team.

Team boss, Colin Kolles, spoke to the press about the announcement; "this has been a very difficult decision. Christijan has started to find some form in the car, but the team's ambitious development programme has been seriously compromised by non-payment by one of his sponsors and we are faced with no other option."

There was speculation within the F1 community for a while now that Albers might not see out the season with Spyker. His performances when compared to his teammate, Adrian Sutil, haven't been all that brilliant; Sutil outqualifying him in seven of the nine races so far and Christijan's pitstop blunder last week in France (where he took off with the fuel hose still attached to his car) didn't help matters either. But, in the end, it was that missed payment which appears to have been the final nail in his 2007 F1 season coffin.

Christijan Albers in action around the streets of Monte Carlo

At the present moment there are just two candidates for the final seat on the grid; Christian Klien and Narain Karthikeyan, both with Formula 1 experience on their CV's.

Klien raced for Jaguar and Red Bull for a total of 46 races and has scored 14 points. He competed well against David Coulthard for the first part of last year but David eventually got on top of him and Klien fell out of favour with Red Bull who overlooked him for 2007, replacing him with (ironically) his former teammate from Jaguar; Mark Webber. Christian will test the Spyker at Spafrancorchamps this Thursday.

Karthikeyan drove for Jordan in the 2005 season and was one of the six cars who actually raced in the farcical Indianapolis Grand Prix when all Michelin-shod teams pulled out for safety concerns. Recently he has been the Williams test-driver and driven in the A1GP series.

The next race is the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring next week so we shall see who is driving the second car soon enough. Spyker have said that even though Christian is testing the car this week, that doesn't mean he'll be the automatic choice for the rest of the season.

Spyker took over the Midland Formula 1 team in September 2006 and have yet to score a point. Despite having Ferrari power, they are in desperate need of funding so the signs tend to point towards Narain landing the seat...so, naturally, I've just jinxed him and Christian will get it instead.

For info regarding Indy losing the rights to host a GP from next year on, check out Dave's blog about it.

And for some insight about the fog surrounding Ferrari/McLaren/Honda right now, go to Iowa's thread on it.

Only after you've read both those can you come back and tell me that NASCAR is complicated, lol