A1GP 2007-2008

[akmohanty]

This weekend's race doesn't look any better for narain. he was 10th and 17th in the two practice sessions. 

[iShUuU]

This weekend's race doesn't look any better for narain. he was 10th and 17th in the two practice sessions. 

[kallu]

yeah not looking very good...qualified 12th and 11th ...
hopefully he will find some pace in the race.. Our team doesnt seem to be very media friendly can never find quotes from NK on the A1 site

[jaydeep]

And in 10 laps sprint race we finished 21st position, last as Australia Ian Dyk's retired after 3 laps ... Our car needed to change nose so they came inside pitlane in second lap so in the end our car was 1'37.816 behind winner, New Zealand's Jonny Reid ...

[jaydeep]

In Feature race Narain ended on 9th position to earn 2 pts ... So we r seeing improvement in race positions.

[kallu]

the overtake on italy around outside was awesome...he caught up with germany in the end, but just didnt have enough laps

[kallu]

http://www.a1teamindia.in/news_article.php?newsid=50

The race report from India, NK set 2nd fastest time in both the races.

Narain Karthikeyan, “Our race pace was very good but we need to work on qualifying higher up the grid next time. We will therefore need to sit together on the car set-up for the race at Sepang.”

[akmohanty]

Qualifying is on right now for the Sepang races. Narain has qualified 14th out of 22  Very mysteriously, more often than not i have seen being conservative and going out much earlier than all others while the track inevitably becomes faster as the sessions go on.as a result, he ends up very low down.
the other thing which infuriates me whenever i see him in qualifying (whether be it F1 or A1) is that he inevitably makes atleast a couple of mistakes which messes up his time. buddha (old) ho gaya, when will he learn, do better, buddy or give up now.

[jaydeep]

After finishing 11th place in sprint race, Narain and Team India performed much better to finished on 6th position in feature race at Sepang.

At A1GP Sepang Feature race result, Malaysia -

Pos  A1 Team    Driver             Time          Gap
1  Switzerland  Neel Jani          1:08'13.459 
2  France       Loïc Duval         1:08'22.387   8.928
3  Brazil       Sérgio Jimenez     1:08'23.873   10.414
4  Netherlands  Jeroen Bleekemolen 1:08'24.681   11.222
5  China        Cheng Cong Fu      1:08'30.813   17.354
6  India        Narain Karthikeyan 1:08'31.053   17.594
7  Ireland      Adam Carroll       1:08'32.831   19.372
8  New Zealand  Jonny Reid         1:08'33.856   20.397
9  Australia    Ian Dyk            1:08'57.753   44.294
10 USA          Jonathan Summerton 1:08'58.008   44.549

So after 3 races Team India is on 13th place with 8 points.

[kallu]

heard it was a good race ...dammit missed it ... Again we are lacking pace in Qualy !

[jaydeep]

Very good article by TNN's Vivek Mukherji about Team India.

Fast in practice, slow in race

Take the example of South Africa and France; both are run by Corner Racing, which is essentially DAMS Racing, which runs its own team in GP2. Similar is the case with Germany and New Zealand, both run by David Sears Motorsports, which again is a major player in GP2 under the name of Supernova. Argo Racing, that supports Brazil and Lebanon, is also a sister outfit of Supernova. As per the A1GP rules only two national teams can be handled by one engineering group.

In such a scenario, technical outfits that manage more than one team get the flexibility to run one team on racing set-up and the other on qualifying set-up in the three practice sessions. As a result they are able to access the entire spectrum of data that is needed to set up cars for qualifying and race day.

In comparison, Team India is run by Arena which doesn't support any other team. Hence they have to work on two different set-up requirements independently. To know the precise qualifying setting a team has to have access to data, which two team operations are able to generate and share. This places them in an advantageous situation, unlike India. Since all the 22 cars on the grid are identical in terms of engine power it all boils down to set-up.

[jaydeep]

Performance which Team India showed in testing never displayed in qualifying ... But atlast Team India managed to change that at Zhuhai race track ..

Team India finished 9th on Sprint race grid and they produced their best-ever performance to finished 3rd on Feature race grid in qualifying ... So hopefully we can expect good performance tomorrow on race day by Narain.

Zhuhai Feature race grid

Pos  A1 Team  Time    Gap
1 Switzerland 1'23.465  -
2 Great Britain 1'23.650  0.185
3 India 1'23.767  0.302
4 France 1'23.784  0.319
5 Germany 1'23.890  0.425
6 China 1'23.930  0.465
7 USA 1'23.992  0.527
8 Malaysia 1'24.036  0.571
9 South Africa 1'24.100  0.635
10 New Zealand 1'24.114  0.649
11 Canada 1'24.149  0.684
12 Portugal 1'24.250  0.785
13 Ireland 1'24.294  0.829
14 Brazil 1'24.328  0.863
15 Lebanon 1'24.328  0.863
16 Czech Republic 1'24.350  0.885
17 Pakistan 1'24.378  0.913
18 Netherlands 1'24.460  0.995
19 Australia 1'24.538  1.073
20 Indonesia 1'24.667  1.202
21 Italy 1'24.810  1.345
22 Mexico 1'24.886  1.421


Zhuhai Sprint race grid

Pos  A1 Team  Time    Gap
1 Germany 1'23.203  -
2 Switzerland 1'23.425  0.222
3 Ireland 1'23.675  0.472
4 China 1'23.784  0.581
5 Great Britain 1'23.850  0.647
6 Czech Republic 1'23.921  0.718
7 France 1'23.928  0.725
8 Netherlands 1'23.965  0.762
9 India 1'23.972  0.769
10 Canada 1'24.029  0.826
11 USA 1'24.104  0.901
12 Brazil 1'24.141  0.938
13 New Zealand 1'24.141  0.938
14 South Africa 1'24.207  1.004
15 Portugal 1'24.263  1.060
16 Italy 1'24.307  1.104
17 Malaysia 1'24.391  1.188
18 Australia 1'24.770  1.567
19 Indonesia 1'24.893  1.690
20 Lebanon 1'24.915  1.712
21 Pakistan 1'24.958  1.755
22 Mexico 1'25.246  2.043

[akmohanty]

at last, a top-3 in Qualifying. Wish Narain the very best, especially for the Feature race.

[akmohanty]

Narain wins Feature race  At last, Narain shows where he truly belongs in this field!!! he had a tough time towards the end as NZ was at his tail but he was flawless  . keep it up, Narain, do well in the rest of the season as well.

[PKBasu]

Congratulations to Narain Karthikeyan. (I don't follow this sport much, but his win deserves kudos!):

http://www.rediff.com/sports/2007/dec/16race.htm