Veteran driver Pedro De La Rosa will join the HRT racing team for the 2012 season of Formula1 racing. De La Rosa has been a tester with McLaren for a long time now and raced for the team when Juan Pablo Montoya left the team to go racing in NASCAR mid season in the year 2006. He made his F1 debut in 1999 with the now defunct Arrows team and also had a stint at the Jaguar team which is now Red Bull Racing. De La Rosa has been with McLaren as a test driver since 2003 and in 2010 he was drafted by the Sauber team which replaced him towards the end of the season last year by Nick Heidfeld. De Le Rosa then performed some tyre testing duties for Pirelli before re-joining McLaren as their test driver. Now again he has been offered a chance to race by the revamped HRT team which is Spanish and he too is from the same nation. His ability for car development has also been instrumental in the 40 year old getting the seat at HRT. If Rubens Barrichello were to be on the grid next year, then the number of drivers who will be over 40 years of age will be three, the third being Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes car.