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Perfect weekend for Karun !

Zhuhai, China, 13th Aug 2006 : India’s Karun Chandhok had a perfect weekend at the Zhuhai circuit in China, finishing with two pole positions and two race victories. The results put him on top of the championship standings in the Asian Formula Renault V6 series. Karun, who is backed this season by JK Tyre along with Scottish and Newcastle and Amaron Batteries is the first driver ever to score a maximum 31 points in a single weekend of the championship.

During Saturday morning’s qualifying session, Karun recorded a benchmark time of 1:31.1s which gave him pole position for Round 7 of the Championship held on Saturday afternoon. The Team E-Rain driver had been suffering with braking trouble all through practice, but by the time qualifying came the team had rectified the problem which enabled him to outqualify championship rival Ananda Mikola by 3 tenths of a second. Speaking about the session Karun said “The circuit was very cool this morning and we made a good call to go out early when the track was still quite cool. Ananda’s done a lot of miles around here, but I think we can be strong in the race. The car is handling very well and I’m looking forward to the races. ”

At the start of Round 7, Karun squeezed ahead of Mikola into turn 1 and from there, the Indian and the Indonesian started to break away from the pack. Mikola kept the pressure on Karun lap after lap, with the lead fluctuating between .8s – 1.8s. The two leaders were setting an impressive pace, pulling away from Hans Lin and Matt Halliday who were in 3rd and 4th places. On a couple of occasions Mikola got close to Karun under braking but the Indian was able to resist his rival’s attack and reeled off the 15 laps to take his third win of the season, just half a second ahead of Mikola. “ Zhuhai is full of long straights and heavy braking zones and I was struggling a bit under braking. Ananda kept pushing the whole race so I really had to concentrate on not making a mistake. I knew that as long as I stayed consistent, my pace was quick enough for the win. The team and I are really nervous after this win actually because every time we’ve won the first race of the weekend we’ve had a mechanical problem in the second one so it’s fingers crossed at the moment ! ”.

Fortunately for Karun and the team, the second race went without a glitch. At the start, Karun sprinted into an immediate lead ahead of team-mate Hans Lin, with Mikola in third and Matt Halliday in 4th. The 22 year old pushed to open an immediate lead of 7 seconds in the first 9 laps and from there on controlled the pace to preserve the car and ensure he didn’t have a repeat of his earlier mechanical problems. Halliday moved into second place with 9 laps to go but couldn’t do anything about Karun’s lead until the last 3 laps when Karun dropped his pace drastically to bring the car home, eventually winning by 2.2 seconds.

E-Rain Racing’s Team Manager Ingo Matter spoke about his driver’s performance today “ Karun drove a superb race today. He did exactly what he had to early on to open the gap and after that it was a nerve wracking race to make sure we finished. He did 21 out of the 25 laps within 3 tenths of a second which at race winning pace is really very impressive consistency”.

Karun was also very happy at having taken the championship points lead, “ It’s good to finally get ahead in the points standings. The car was really good once we got the braking issues sorted and I personally think that the second race today was one of my best ever. To win 4 out of 8 races so far this year and be in a position to have won at least two more is quite a good position to be in at the moment I think. We’ve got a long break now before the next round and I’m really happy that we go into this period on a confidence high.”

Results -

Round 7

1. Karun Chandhok, India
2. Ananda Mikola, Indonesia + 0.531s
3. Hans Lin, Taiwan +8.8s

Round 8

1. Karun Chandhok, India
2. Matt Halliday, New Zealand +2.201s
3. Hammad Al Fardan, Bahrain +12.94s

Championship standings

1. Karun Chandhok – 84 points
2. Ananda Mikola – 76 points
Hammad Al Fardan – 66 points

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