Dubai, UAE ; January 24th 2008 : India’s Karun Chandhok is in confident mood ahead of the opening round of this years GP2 Asia series. The 24 year old Indian has been amongst the top 5 throughout the test sessions, and even topped the times on Tuesday afternoon.

Driving for the British I-Sport International squad, the Chennai born driver spoke ahead of the season opener “I'm really looking forward to the season. The tests were reasonably good - we had a couple good days and a couple not so good days. I've built up a good working relationship with the engineers in a short space of time and although we started the week a little bit behind we have made good progress with the car. The mechanics did a really good job in the pitstop practices yesterday and I think there's no reason why we can't be in contention for podiums this weekend.

The circuit itself is quite bumpy and dusty, as you would expect in a desert ! It's going to be really important to get the tyres to work in qualifying and the dirt offline will make the racing exciting so should be good to watch as well. There are some very quick guys here including Romain Grosjean, Luca Filippi, Adrian Valles, Andy Soucek and of course my team mate Bruno Senna."

The inaugural GP2 Asia series kicks off in Dubai before moving on to Indonesia, Malaysia, Bahrain and then back to Dubai for the final round. The format for the weekend will be similar to the European series, with 2 races every weekend. The majority of the drivers for the GP2 Asia series are also competing in the European series which means that the level of competition, as ever, is incredibly high.

The first race of the weekend is at 1500 hrs Dubai time on Friday (25th Jan) and the second race at 1230 on Saturday (26th Jan).

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