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A1 GP

Bad weekend for the Indian racers

By: Karthik :+: Under: A1 GP, Cars, GP2, Karun Chandok, Narain Karthikeyan, Sports
On: ⋅ April 16, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Both Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandok were racing this weekend as we had posted earlier.

Narain representing Team India qualified 5th for the sprint race, the best qualifying position for India thus far, but unfortunately he could not turn that into a good result.

Starting 5th for the sprint race, Narain lost two positions finishing 7th, which was the grid spot for the start of the feature race.

In the feature race, Narain was involved in a first lap incident with the Swiss and South African cars ending his race.

The Sprint race was ok, but it was frustrating to finish just out of the points. The Feature race was a bit more dramatic! On the first lap, someone hit me and my car was damaged. Obviously the floor and the side pod were damaged, but I couldn’t tell how bad it was from inside the car. Then after a piece of the side pod came off, the car became very imbalanced and difficult to drive; it lost a lot of down force and was slow down the straights. We were just going backwards so the team called me in and we changed the body work. Then on the last lap, I came around the final corner and the car just snapped to the left, there was nothing I could do and it hit the tire barrier, I think something broke on the car. My races in China don’t seem to go well, I always seem to walk away from a destroyed car!

I hope our luck changes in Brands Hatch, I like the circuit and I’ve won races there before, but we’ll have to see, you never know with racing.

The incident Narain is referring to is from his F1 career driving the Jordan in 2005, when Narain had a spectacular crash after a safety car period. He put the car a few inches off the track and the artificial turn sucked his car into the barrier and led to one of the biggest crashes that year. Narain did manage to walk away unscathed.

Meanwhile halfway around the world Karun Chandok was racing for Durango in the GP2 race. He managed to finish 9th after an impressive overtaking move. In the second race, Karun managed to find another car in his path, made contact and his race ended there.

Talking about his debut, Karun said

I consider my debut a good one. I made a mistake in the qualifiers which resulted in me losing 3 tenths and dropping back a few positions. Race 1 was very exciting, I really enjoyed myself and I felt at ease with the car. In Race 2 I lost a few positions in order to avoid the pile-up on the first bend. The car raced well but as I was trying to regain position I had contact with another driver and the race for me ended there.

Narain has just two more races and Karun has an entire season ahead of him.

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