Friday: Karthikeyan Thrilled to Race at Home
Narain Karthikeyan replaced Vitantonio Liuzzi this weekend for the Indian Grand Prix - his home Grand Prix, and the HRT driver is thrilled to be racing in front of his home crowd. He enjoyed his first laps on the brand-new Buddh International Circuit. His teammate at HRT, Daniel Ricciardo, also enjoyed his debut on this new track and hopes to be competitive tomorrow in the qualifying session and on Sunday during the race, even though he still needs to work on his car's settings with his engineers.
Narain Karthikeyan – 21st and 24th
The first session was very special; I felt so many emotions riding in India. I couldn’t believe it and so many things were running through my mind. During the first practice session, we just tried to get things in place and the second one went much better, and we will have a lot of things to try tomorrow. Overall, it’s been two good sessions for me, especially since I hadn’t ridden a race distance since July, so my body needed a bit of a wake-up. The track is evolving a lot and times are improving as a result. We will have a few small things to try for tomorrow, so I look forward to seeing how the qualification session goes.
Daniel Ricciardo – 20th and 23rd
This was our first day here today and I can say that it’s a fun track, I’m happy with the layout and I think most drivers appreciate it. This morning, the track was cleaning up, so doing as many laps as possible was the most important thing. This afternoon, we started to work a bit on the two types of tires. I’m not completely satisfied because this morning we made changes that didn’t work as well as we had hoped. We will need to analyze that and work on it for tomorrow. I think we can compete with our closest rivals here and give them a run for their money.
