THE NURBURGRING circuit, which hosted the 2011 German Grand Prix saw both Indian drivers drive in the Free Practice Session on Friday. The first time happened* was in the Turkish Grand Prix earlier this season. In Germany, Karun Chandhok made his debut for Team Lotus Racing this season, returning to a race drive almost a year after he was shown the door by Hispania Racing Team. Narain Karthikeyan on the other hand, drove in the Free Practice session for Hispania Racing after losing his race seat to Australian rookie driver Daniel Ricciardo at the British Grand Prix. (*One could argue that a similar situation was true for the 2011 Australian GP as well. While that would be correct, the slight difference is that while Narain was present in Australia for the race, the HRT car wasn’t ready and hence he didn’t drive the session)
Narain Karthikeyan did surprise a few in the paddock by managing a lap time 7 tenths quicker than Ricciardo and ending the practice session in 20th position. Karun’s benchmark all weekend was his Finnish team-mate Heikki Kovalainen. For those wondering how the team would measure Karun’s progress through the weekend, it would obviously be by directly comparing laptimes and speed vs. Kovalainen.
In Friday’s Free Practice 1 session, Karun was 1.4 seconds off his team-mate, followed by a 1.5 second difference in Free Practice 2. Karun managed a total of 52 laps to gain mileage and experience in what actually was Jarno Trulli’s racing car till the British GP weekend. Saturday’s practice session too saw Karun around 1.5 seconds off the pace, but the Chennai-born racer managed to string his performance together in the qualifying session to close the gap to Kovalainen down to around 9 tenths. He finished the qualifying session in 21st position, but started the race 20th after Sebastien Buemi’s grid penalty.
Karun described his race as a ‘vertical learning curve’ after he completed the entire race distance but ended 4 laps behind the leaders. In fact, the only negative in his entire weekend was his completing the race a lap down on Kovalainen. He eventually finished 20th and last with a fastest laptime of 1:40:435, almost 1.5 seconds slower than his team-mate.
In the world of Formula1, your immediate benchmark is your team-mate and while Karun didn’t match his pace and laptimes throughout the German GP weekend, I am sure that the learnings from this weekend will surely help Karun assess whenever he’s offered a race drive next. One must remember that this was Karun’s first full racing weekend after almost a year and in a team and car he had never driven in racing conditions before.
Force India’s performance has been steadily on the rise this season and it was visible during Saturday’s qualifying session when both their drivers were in contention for Q3 of qualifying. In the end, it was Adrian Sutil who out-qualified Paul di Resta to qualify 8th on the grid. Di Resta, who drove on this circuit for the first time in his Formula1 career, was half a second slower than Sutil in qualifying and managed a 12th place on the grid.
Both drivers managed a decent start to the race, with Sutil immediately gaining a few places in the opening sequence of laps. Paul di Resta was unfortunate to have made contact with Lotus Renault’s Nick Heidfeld, that saw him lose ground and vital time on the opening lap of the race. The loss of time prompted Di Resta to charge through the field and still make his two-stop strategy work. He eventually ended the race in 13th place, 4 tenths of a second behind Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari.
Adrian Sutil, also driving his home race, managed to finish a strong 6th position, thereby registering Force india’s strongest finish yet in the 2011 season. His two stop strategy worked perfectly well and also allowed him to jump Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg in the third round of pitstops. In fact, Sutil was one of only 6 drivers who weren’t lapped by eventual race winner Lewis Hamilton this weekend.
Sutil’s finish earned Force India 8 points that saw their overall tally in the Constructor’s Championship add up to 20 points, 3 clear of Toro Rosso in 8th place. Next in target for the Dr. Mallya-owned team is the Sauber team, which is 6th and 15 points ahead. Eight points were also added to Sutil’s tally, which is now upto 18 points and he lies 12th in the Driver’s Championship table.
It was encouraging to see the Force India F1 team battle with the manufacturer teams of Mercedes and Renault in Germany. The Hungarian GP is only a week away and I would expect the team to carry their form forward to Budapest, while Chandhok will hand over racing duties back to Trulli and Narain will be present in yet another Friday Practice session for HRT.
