The Hindu : Karun finishes sixth

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Sport

Sport - Racing : Motor

Karun finishes sixth

Chennai May 27. Rain played spoilsport at Croft in Yorkshire where the second day races in the F-3 scholarship series, which features India's, Karun Chandok. Actually, Karun reached Croft in high spirits, after the two successive podium finishes in the circuit.

Testing went well for the young Indian and though during the first qualifying session, he was only ninth, he put in a storming lap right at the end of the qualifying to jump to the fifth on the grid. The gap separating third places to ninth was under three-tenth of a second.

The first race of the weekend was held on Saturday evening. At the start it was dry with the clouds getting darker and darker and by the end of the second lap, it began to rain heavily, and the track was flooded. The race was stopped and all the cars were called to the pits for change of tyres. The tyre choice was a gamble in unpredictable weather conditions. The track was too wet but Karun managed to finish sixth after some scary moments and brief spins to retain his fourth place in the championship.

Karun Chandok said after the race, " that has to be the most crazy race I've ever driven. Unfortunately, there was a communication gap between my engineer and me, and we weren't able to make the call on tyres and followed what others were doing which was not right. I'm just really happy to have finished the race and scored some points-something that many more experienced people didn't do today.'' Justin Sherwood won by a huge margin.

Sunday's programme was cancelled because the organisers felt it was too dangerous for the drivers. With only nine of the 26 races finished this year, there's plenty of time for Karun to progress further in the table.

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