Manama, Bahrain ; 22nd April 2009 :

Indian racing ace Karun Chandhok will be driving his first GP2 races of the year in Bahrain this coming weekend. The Chennai born driver is backed by Punj Lloyd, JK Tyre and Amaron and will be driving for Ocean Racing Technology in the final round of the GP2 Asia series.

The races in Bahrain will be supporting the Formula 1 World Championship. ORT, who are owned by former F1 driver Tiago Monteiro, will also be running Karun in the main GP2 series which kicks off in Barcelona on the 9th of May.

After spending the last few weekends behind the microphone sharing his comments with viewers on Star Sport’s coverage of Formula 1, Chandhok is looking forward to getting back behind the wheel : “It’s been nearly 7 months since the last GP2 race of 2008 so I’m really looking forward to this weekend. While the GP2 European series is the most important program, Tiago and I both felt it would be useful to do a weekend of the Asian series together as a pre-cursor to the main series. ORT are a new team and it will be the first time I’ll be working with the engineers and mechanics on a race weekend so it will be a good test for us to understand each other’s working practices.”

Karun, who was a multiple podium finisher in the GP2 series over the last two seasons, was on strong form last year in Bahrain when he raced with isport International. “I qualified on the front row and was leading both races last year, but came away with no points ! We were really unlucky not to win after a safety car period in race 1 cost me the lead and then Diego Nunes took me out of the lead in race 2. I like the Bahrain International Circuit and have generally been strong there in the past so it’ll be interesting to go back there this time with ORT. Hopefully we can have a bit more luck !”

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