Monaco (Monte Carlo):
Indian F1 driver Narain Karthikeyan qualified 23rd for the Monaco GP, round six of the 2012 FIA Formula 1 Championship.
The blue-riband event of the series sees drivers take to the narrow streets of the Principality through the weekend. It was looking good for the HRT F1 driver as the opening practice session on Thursday saw him complete 26 laps, finishing ahead of the two Marussia drivers and his teammate Pedro De La Rosa.
“There were a few off-track excursions, but this is normal in Monaco when you are trying to find the limit”, he revealed.
The second Thursday practice was rained out, resulting in very little running.
This meant the one-hour final practice session was a busy effort, with the Indian completing 19 laps in final preparation for qualifying.
“It was looking good for qualifying, we had got a fair amount of running and since the circuit isn’t aero-dependent, we were closer to the cars ahead of us”, he said.
The start of the qualifying session was interrupted due to an incident which brought out the red flag.
But once the track cleared, it was back to business and after 8 laps Karthikeyan was able to post a 1:19.310, good enough for 23rd on the grid for tomorrow’s race.
However, the Indian revealed later that all didn’t go to plan.
“We both had three runs, and I was ahead of him after the first two runs on new tires when we both put on new set of super soft tyres for each outing.”
“However, when I expected the third set of new tires my engineer strangely called it off! This meant I wasn’t able to improve a lot whereas Pedro went almost a second quicker.
“I wouldn’t have done that lap though, but I would have been closer.So I need to discuss this with the team.”
However, he remains optimistic for the race tomorrow, considering the weather forecast which predicts a chance of rain.
“It was supposed to rain during qualifying today but it didn’t. So hope we get some showers tomorrow as it will give us a chance to do something more than usual”, he concluded.
source: http://www.indiansportsnews.com / Home> Top Stories / Saturday, May 26th, 2012