Valencia, Spain, August 23, 2009: Indian racing ace Karun Chandhok put on a magnificent display, fighting from the back of the grid to finish 6th at the European GP2 sprint race at the Valencia street circuit. Chandhok fought his way through the field in an incident packed race which caused the safety car to be deployed three times in the first 8 laps. Chandhok had earlier failed to finish in the feature race due to a damaged steering arm.

Chandhok got his race weekend off to a great start by finishing 4th in the free practice session. He encountered traffic on his qualifying lap, but still managed to start in a strong 8th position for the feature race. Chandhok made a good start and was running in 7th place till the first round of stops. He lost out in the pit stop and came out in 9th position, but managed a bold move on Davide Valsecchi into 8th. Running in 8th position and all set for the reverse pole, he suffered a broken suspension and had to retire.

The Ocean Racing Technology driver said, “We had a great start to the weekend finishing 4th in practice and were looking ready for a good qualifying position. Unfortunately traffic can be a problem here and we never got a perfect lap in. In the feature race we were looking good for a points finish but when I went to pass Valsecchi, we touched quite lightly which resulted in a broken front suspension soon after. I was very disappointed that we would be starting from the back of the grid rather than on the front row.”

The sprint race started off in chaotic fashion with Kamui Kobayashi tapping Luca Fillipi into a spin and causing the safety car to come out. Chandhok drove the first lap with maturity and picked his gaps in the chaos to move up 7 places on the opening lap.

< read more....>