Narain Karthikeyan wins A1 GP China - Review

After finishing a creditable seventh in the feature race, here was a chance for Narain to finish on the podium for the very first time, having qualified a brilliant third on the grid for the sprint race. At the start of the race Oliver Jarvis overtook Neel Jani before turn one while Narain maintained his third position. The first four cars were pretty evenly matched till the first pit stop window. That’s when Jarvis lost his position to Jani thanks to a poor pit stop. While a brilliant pit stop by team India saw Narain maintaining his third behind Adrian Zaugg from South Africa who was yet to pit.

After Zaugg did go in after a couple of laps, Narain started to increase the distance between him and NZ and slowly and steadily kept chipping away the gap between him and Jani. By the time the pit stop window opened again, Narain had increased his gap from NZ to about 3 seconds. Narain entered the pits, another precise pit stop by team India. On the other hand Jani’s dream turned into a nightmare. The right rear wheel wouldn’t go on and his race was ruined and could only finish sixth.

Then on Narain led throughout the race to the chequered flag, keeping a determined NZ at bay and winning by half a second and India became the fourteenth country to have won an A1 GP. The team now stands tenth in the championship.

Narain showed immense class through the race with brilliant car control, braking later and harder than anyone else. The important thing is that the win came in early in the season, and hopefully we will see the Tricolour waving on top of the podium more often.