Date: 01 August 2009, Algarve, Portugal

After one round in Barcelona and another in Spa, the Le Mans Series is in Portugal this weekend, with the 1,000 Km of Algarve, held from 30 July until 1st of August. The brand new Algarve race track will host the third round of the 2009 LMS season.

The starting grid will consist of 35 entries, amongst which Narain Karthikeyan will share the No. 14 Kolles Audi R10TDI with Charles Zwolsman & Andrew Meyrick. Amongst the list of former Formula 1 drivers like Olivier Panis, Tomas Enge & Christian Albers who are entered in this championship, Tiago Monteiro, the famous Portuguese racing driver and team-mate to Narain during his 2005 season at Jordan in Formula 1, will share the drive of the Oreca LMP1 car with Bruno Senna, nephew of the late-great Ayrton Senna.

All teams and drivers, discovering a new layout, will contest on equal terms for this Le Mans Series round; one of the first international competitions held on this brand new circuit. Narain however, has competed at this track before, earlier this year in A1GP, The World Cup of Motorsport. He was running third in that race when his car suffered from wheel bearing failure with 2 laps to go. This race is also unusual as it will be at night, starting at 7:15 pm (local time)! It’s a wonderful opportunity to create, during one week-end, the Le Mans atmosphere for the Portuguese and the many tourists present at this time of year. The spectators will be treated to a concert organised in the paddock, as well as 6 support races.

The first practice session on Thursday afternoon saw Narain’s car suffering from some gearbox gremlins, preventing Narain from doing any laps at all, but the second practice session later in the evening saw Narain and his team-mates post the 5th fastest time of the session. The 3rd practice on Friday morning continued the trend of top ten performances with their No.14 Kolles Audi R10TDI posting the 9th quickest time during the session. Qualifying was held late on Friday evening. Narain will start the race on Saturday evening from 8th on the grid.

After qualifying, Narain commented, “I went out early in the 20 minute qualifying session and only got the chance to do 4 timed laps. One of the other cars dropped some oil on the track ahead of me, and that made it quite difficult to push very hard. On my last timed lap, I put in my fastest 1st & 2nd sector times, but exiting onto the front straight at the end of the lap, I got stuck behind another car which was coming into the pits and that lost me about four-tenths of a second. As per the LMS rules, we only get to use 1 set of tyres in qualifying, so although I only managed the 8th fastest time, I’m very upbeat about the race pace of the Kolles Audi R10TDI. It’s a long race, about 6 hours in total, and I’m scheduled to drive the second stint of two hours starting at approximately 11:30 pm local time. My shoulder is absolutely healed after my injury at the Le Mans 24 Hour race in mid-June. The physiotherapy over the past 5 weeks, both back home in Coimbatore and especially the last one week in Switzerland has helped me back to 100% fitness. I’m very confident that it will not be a factor in this race.”

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