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Karun ‘rocks’ Indonesia

Jakarta, Indonesia - July 23rd 2006

India’s Karun Chandhok scored his second victory in Round 5 of the Formula Renault V6 series at the Sentul race track today. In a country still recovering from the earthquake and tsunami of last week, Karun upset the expectant local crowd by finishing the 15 lap race 1.3 seconds ahead of local hero Ananda Mikola with Bahraini driver Hammad Al Fardan in 3rd.

New Zealand’s Matt Halliday qualified on pole position with Karun in second after a closely fought qualifying session. After qualifying, Karun said “ Matt, Ananda and I have been very evenly matched all weekend. We were trading fastest laps all through qualifying as well but unfortunately I ran wide on my final lap with meant that I lost a chance to out-qualify him. We are on the front row and that itself is very important.”

As the lights went green, the Halliday and Karun sprinted side by side at over 250 kmh into turn 1. Halliday tried to outbrake Karun and ran wide, allowing the Indian to slip down the inside and into the lead. From there on, Karun worked hard to extend his lead lapping consistently in the low 1m 23’s. By lap 8 he had extended his lead to over 8 seconds before suffering from overheating front brakes. The 22 year old from Madras, had to back off the pace to ensure the car finished, allowing Mikola to close within 1.3 seconds by the end.

Karun, who is backed by JK Tyre, Scottish and Newcastle and Amaron Batteries, said “ The car was very good early on and I knew that when I got ahead of Matt I had to get on with it and pull away. Sentul has some very hard braking zones and towards the end the brakes really started to overheat so I just backed off and took it easy till the flag. It’s really a great result for me and the team. We had a tough weekend at Sepang and this is a good way to get back into contention. Ananda’s got a great fan base here and I think I upset them a little bit with the result ! ”

In Round 6 of the day, Karun was gearing up for an end of race battle with Halliday, Mikola and Lin when under the safety car he lost Hydraulic pressure and had to retire. Afterwards he said, “ There was definitely a podium finish there for the taking and it’s really frustrating to have a second mechanical non-finish this season because that’s more free points we’ve given away. I was just driving around behind the safety car in 2nd gear and suddenly I lost the hydraulic pressure which means that the gearbox and clutch stop working. ”

Overall, the championship battle is now really heating up. Al Fardan and Mikola are now tied on 56, with Karun on 53, Seth Ingham on 42 and Halliday has got 36 points. The Championship now moves to Zhuhai in China in 3 weeks time for Rounds 7 and 8.

Round 5 –

1. Karun Chandhok 20m 53.907s
2. Ananda Mikola + 1.346s
3. Hammad Al Fardan + 11.497s

Round 6 –

1. Ananda Mikola 56m 11.745s
2. Matt Halliday + .850s
3. Hans Lin + 14.047s

** END **