Narain Karthikeyan qualifies 23rd for
Monaco GP
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 taketo 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.
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