Karun @ GP2 Series
Karun celebrates Republic Day with podium in GP2 Asia

Dubai, UAE; January 26th 2008: India’s Karun Chandhok demonstrated his frontrunning form in the first-ever GP2 Asia Series race weekend at Dubai Autodrome with iSport International, scoring points in both races and finishing on the podium in the sprint event.

Karun battled against adversity all week, as technical problems and a big crash in the pre-event test sessions put him on the back foot. The 24-year-old from Chennai was also struggling with an extreme fever throughout the race weekend, which resulted in sleepless nights and less than ideal health for two long races against a super competitive field.

Despite this, he qualified fourth, on the second row of the grid, and only dropped off the front row in the very final seconds of the session. “I dropped a tenth of a second at the final corner of my best lap,” he said. “If it wasn’t for that, I’d be on the front row for sure.”

 

The start of the feature race did not go to plan, as the start lights flashed on and off incredibly quickly, causing Karun to lose a place to Luca Filippi (Meritus). That meant he spent the first past of the race sat behind the Italian, so he decided to pit early to try and get ahead of him.

But disaster struck as he rejoined, and he spun on cold tyres at Turn 1, losing valuable time and places. He would then get bottled up behind Filippi’s team-mate Hiroki Yoshimoto. The Japanese driver was so slow that his early braking point for the hairpin caught Karun out, and he locked up his rear wheels at the hairpin and spun again. He would recover to finish in the points in eighth position. “It was just a frustrating race,” he said. “So many things just didn’t work out, and I just missed out on taking the point for fastest lap too. I’m determined to make up for it tomorrow. At the end of the day, there’s no doubt that we are fast – only Grosjean, Senna and I were able to lap in the mid 1m 22s range and everyone else is at least 5 tenths behind us.”

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