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Sunday 6 March 2005

It was a historic day for motorsports in India. India’s ace driver Narain Karthikeyan made an impressive debut at the first Grand Prix of the season at Melbourne. He kept his pace during the second qualifying to be placed 12th on Grid. The weather was sunny and bright perfect for a race and the Australian GP had the best to offer with Giancarlo Fisichella at the pole and finished it with a win.

The Jordans qualified 12th and 14th respectively following this morning’s final qualifying session, the first under the new “aggregate” system, Narain Karthikeyan and Tiago Monteiro gave a strong drive in today’s Albert Park race to bring their Jordan Toyota EJ15s home in 15th and 16th place at the rookies’ first Formula One Grand Prix.

Speaking to the media after the race Narain said “I had a very bad start and then stayed behind Monteiro for a while. After he first pit stop, I pushed a lot and it was a trouble-free race. It is very good to finish the first Grand Prix of the season and I am looking forward to the next race, even though the weather conditions will be much warmer and humid.”

His team mate who finished next to him had this to “The goal was to finish the race and this is what we managed to achieve. We are not the only team apparently, as all the cars seemed pretty reliable. As I said during the weekend, we need to finish races and collect as much information as possible. There are so many things I have learnt today and that is the most important. For the next race, I would like to make some changes to my seat position and my seat belt. I had a great start but then I lost a lot of time when people were overtaking me so I have to work on that but otherwise I am very happy to have finished the race.”

Trevor Carlins, the sporting Director, added “We are very glad we finished the year’s first Grand Prix. We got both cars to the finish and that is an achievement, even though it would have been nice to finish a bit higher up the results table. Now we are looking forward to going to Malaysia and if possible improving the car a little bit.”

Collin Kolles, the managing Director had this to say about the race “Before the Grand Prix our aim was to get both cars to the end - so I am very happy that they finished the race in the same conditions they started in and that there were no nasty surprises. ”

Narain has been doing well in the formula races and has been knocking at the F1 since 2001 and today that dream of an individual has come to inspire a nation. This has been made possible with the sponsorship backing from The TATAs, the second largest private enterprise in India and BPCL, the state owned refiner with its branding of Speed petrol and also JK Tyres.

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