“The Fastest Indian in The World” Narain Karthikeyan opened a new chapter in his distinguished International Motorsports career last weekend, by finishing 6th in his first Le Mans Series race for the Kolles Audi Team, driving the Audi R10 TDi LMP1 Sportscar. The 5.5 liter V12, turbo-diesel powered car is one of the most successful sportscars in the history of the championship, winning the Le Mans 24-hour classic for the past three years.

Narain added another couple of ‘firsts’ to the innumerable ‘firsts’ in his career CV, becoming the first Indian driver to enter the Le Mans Series, and the first to score championship points, that too in his debut race.

The 1,000 km Endurance race held at the Spa-Francorchamps Circuit in Belgium was the venue of the second round of the 2009 Le Mans Series (LMS), where Narain started his summer season of racing in 2009. With its mixture of long straights, fast corners and varying gradients, the circuit ranks as one of the most technically challenging circuits in the world, and is a firm favourite with teams and drivers alike. Narain has good memories of this track, as it was the venue of a great battle between himself & Jacques Villeneuve during his 2005 Formula 1 campaign.

Due to the 1,000 km long endurance nature of the races (a Formula 1 race is only 305 km long), Narain shared driving duties with two other drivers, Briton Andrew Meyrick & Dutchman Charles Zwolsman. Narain undertook the driving duties during qualifying on Saturday and qualified the car 9th on the grid, ahead of the teams’ second car driven by Christian Albers.

As per championship regulations, the qualifying driver can either start the race, or finish the race, and Narain chose the latter, thus doing the 3rd & final stint during Sunday’s race. He took over the car at 5:15 pm local time, approximately 4 hours 25 minutes after the race had started, and drove the last 1 hour 25 minutes of the race. He crossed the finish line in 6th position, 2 laps ahead of the teams sister car which finished in 7th position.

After the race Narain said, “It was a phenomenal experience for me to race in the LMS. The car is extremely technical, very challenging to drive, and race strategies are of crucial importance. There are 50 cars racing on the track at the same time, in 4 different classes of cars. The speed differentials between the various classes makes it very difficult to race, as you’re lapping cars all the time, which doesn’t allow you to get into a rhythm at all. I had a big scare towards the end of the race when Bruno Senna (nephew of 3-times F1 champion, Ayrton) had a huge shunt just in front of me at the super-fast Blanchimont corner. Fortunately he was unhurt, but his car was a total write-off. The list of world class manufacturers represented in this form of racing is staggering: Audi, Peugeot, Aston Martin, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Chevrolet, and Mazda. Unfortunately this season, last minute rule changes like a 30 kg weight increase & fuel usage restrictions, have slightly disadvantaged the diesel powered cars, allowing some of the petrol powered cars like the Aston Martins to have a slight advantage over us in race pace. The Peugeot is still super-competitive as it’s a full factory funded team and a much newer design than our Audi R10s, which started racing over 3 years ago, but our car is very reliable and should give us an advantage during the next race, which is the 24 hour race at Le Mans.”

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