Sentul, Indonesia; February 17th 2008: India’s Karun Chandhok was unable to repeat his podium-scoring form in the second round of the GP2 Asia Series at Sentul in Indonesia with iSport International, despite matching the speed of the leaders throughout the weekend.

The track conditions at Sentul created some of the most difficult driving conditions in GP2 history, due to a mixture of the track surface breaking up and the heavy rain showers the region is noted for. After a wet free practice, qualifying was a lottery due to the rain. Karun started the feature race in sixth position, and made up one position on the opening lap when he passed Christian Bakkerud (Super Nova).

The 24-year-old from Chennai, who is backed by Red Bull, JK Tyre, Amaron and ICSA Logistics, then struck his first adversity of the weekend, as the safety car came out to allow crashed cars to be recovered. However, the notification on the pitwall monitors did not appear, so when Karun opted to make his mandatory pitstop at the earliest opportunity, the iSport team wasn’t prepared to receive him. “The first they knew I was coming in was when I appeared in the pitlane”,said Karun. “It wasn’t their fault that the information wasn’t on the screen when it should have been but it was really unfortunate for us as it made a mess of the strategy.”

The slow pitstop dropped Karun to 17th, but at the restart he was quickly working his way back to the front. “I made five places in two laps”, said Karun of his progress, but his race would end soon after. As he tried to pass Adrian Valles (FMS), who would go on to finish second, two other cars were also in close proximity at Turn 3 and slowed unexpectedly.

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