Pedro de la Rosa will start life as Pirelli's Formula One tester in October, the Italian manufacturer has confirmed.
The Spaniard, who lost his F1 race seat shortly before the Singapore GP, takes over from Nick Heidfeld - the man who replaced him at Sauber.
"I'm really pleased to be joining Pirelli," the 39-year-old said.
"Tyre testing is something that I have always enjoyed as it is a very big challenge, especially in Formula 1. The information you can get from telemetry and sensors is valuable, but nothing replaces the individual feeling of a driver with new tyres so I hope I can be a real asset to Pirelli.
"There's not a lot of time left and a huge amount of work to do, but I'm very much looking forward to it and I am sure that our collaboration will be a success. A lot of useful work has been done already and now we have the opportunity of taking it forward."
De la Rosa will make his debut during a two-day session in Spain on October 5-6.
Fellow tester Romain Grosjean was on duty at Monza recently, completing about 70 laps over the two days to check durability and consistency of the tyres in warm conditions.
"Romain jumped in to do some durability testing and did an excellent job," Pirelli's Motorsport Director Paul Hembery said.
"The objective of this test was to confirm the structural specification of the tyres we will use for the first time at the test in Abu Dhabi, and we now move on to working on our rain tyres and compound definition."
