The penultimate round of the 2009 Le Mans Series is being held at the legendary Nürburgring circuit in Germany. High on a hill, the medieval castle of Nürburg looks down on both the historic Nordschleife (North loop) circuit with its 172 corners spread over 22 km, as well as the modern 4.556 km circuit with its series of mostly slow corners.

Practice sessions went quite well for Narain Karthikeyan and his team-mates Charles Zwolsman & Andrew Meyrick. Their No 14 Kolles Audi R10TDI car has performed quite well in all three practice sessions, posting consistent top-ten fastest times. In the second practice session on Friday afternoon, when Narain was behind the wheel, they were 3rd quickest.

Qualifying was held on Saturday afternoon at 2 pm local time. The team had taken a decision to hand the qualifying duties to Charles Zwolsman, as he has a great deal of experience at this circuit. At the end of the session, the No 14 Kolles Audi R10TDI qualified 7th on the grid, ahead of its sister car, the No 15 Kolles Audi R10TDI, driven by Christian Bakkerud, who shares the driving duties in that car with Christian Albers & Giorgio Mondini.

After the qualifying session Narain said, “I’m quite confident about a good result in tomorrows race. The Kolles Audi R10TDI has been really fast here at the Nürburgring all weekend, and with our reliability record being almost 100% all season long, we are all looking forward to a strong performance in the race. All three of us need to be consistently quick throughout our driving stints, not make any mistakes, and I’m sure we will have a good result on Sunday afternoon.”

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