Spa-Francorrchamps,
Belgium, August 30, 2009: Indian racing sensation Karun
Chandhok put in yet another fighting drive from the back
of the gird to finish seventh in the GP2 race at Belgium. Chandhok
had earlier retired from the feature race after struggling
with the handling of his car.

The weekend started
off with a damp track for practice, in which all drivers started off
with wet tyres. Chandhok went 6th on his first lap
and remained in that position for the first half of practice. The
track started to dry during the last couple of minutes of the session
and the lap times began to tumble with drivers opting for slick tyres.
Chandhok opted not to go out and instead decided
to save his tyres for qualifying and the race. On a dry track for
qualifying, Chandhok and his team-mate Parente started
off strongly and occupied the first two positions for majority of
the session. Positions were swapped regularly in what turned out to
be one of the closest qualifying sessions ever. Chandhok finished
in 6th place, a mere two-tenths away from pole.
Chandhok
struggled in the feature race with a car that was handling
very poorly. He was struggling in the race fighting hard to keep his
car on track in 6th place. As the race went on the car become impossible
to drive and Chandhok spun out of the race. Chandhok
commented, "It is
shame that we were only two tenths off in qualifying and still in
6th position. This just shows how close all the cars were over here.
Unfortunately on my fastest lap I caught Di Grassi which made me lose
time. I had a good start to the feature race but for some reason we
had a big imbalance in the car. I was really struggling from lap 4
onwards losing 1-2 seconds a lap and was struggling before I finally
collided with Davide Rigon and had to retire from the race. It is
a shame as we had a good car in qualifying and should have carried
on in the race. I'm still not entirely clear as to what problem we
had but for sure it wasn't normal.”
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