Karthikeyan hits the big time
Overdrive — March 1 , 2005

Overdrive's Grand Prix correspondent Mike Doodson caught up with Narain Karthikeyan at the St James Hotel in London to gauge his reaction to the intense media blitz in India and also to put Narain's 2005 prospects in the Jordan in correct perspective. With the unexpected announcement on February 3 that Narain Karthikeyan is to be racing with Jordan Grand Prix this year, it is understandable that Indian motor racing fans should be thrilled and excited to have one of their countrymen join the elite of F1 racing. At the same time, however, a note of caution is advisable because it has all happened at the last possible minute.

After dashing to England for seat fittings and to clear up the financial details, Narain was at Silverstone for his first run in the new car, the EJ15, on February 10. He knows the circuit well, but it is not exactly a friendly place in the middle of the English winter, when the days are short and the dank humidity hangs stubbornly in the trees even when the sun tries its best to shine. "They weren't wonderful laps," said Narain when we met in London: "damp, because at this time of the year you can't expect England to be dry. In fact I hadn't driven a racing car since November, so to come back three months later and to be stepping into an F1 was not an ideal situation. It was a huge shock, very fast. Then after half a day everything seemed to calm down and I was OK." Our rendezvous was a discreet hotel, just round the corner from Buckingham Palace. Narain, accompanied by representatives of his backers and by his English manager, Piers Hunnisett, was getting used to the hectic pace of off-track F1, with his mobile vibrating away at frequent intervals.

A small but significant hurdle had already been passed during his two days with the car. This was the acquisition of a Super licence, as required by all F1 drivers. Because has never won a major championship, this had involved Narain driving 300km under the eye of an FIA-appointed observer. The laps, he said, had been largely trouble-free.

Narain owes his position to his close links with the British team whose cars he has raced in Formula 3 and the Nissan World Series. It was only on February 4 that the deal was done and approved by Alex Shnaider, the 36- year-old Russian-born steel magnate who had bought the ailing Jordan team only days earlier. Narain had been recommended by Trevor Carlin, the British racing team owner who had been hired by Shnaider to manage Jordan following the departure of Eddie Jordan himself. It was Narain who scored Carlin's first ever F3 victory in 1999, and the two have a strong mutual respect.

It was unfortunate, therefore, that Shnaider admitted he doesn't expect much from Jordan and its adapted 2004 'hybrid' car in this year's races. It was tactless, too, to say that he had decided to take two sponsored 'renta-drivers' this year (Narain's team-mate is another Carlin graduate, the little-known Portuguese Tiago Monteiro) because he doesn't want to 'waste' any of his 2006 budget. Yes, Narain and Tiago owe their places in F1 to the support of their sponsors, but they are both professional racing drivers who have always dreamed of being in the big time on their own merits.

Not since Australian airline tycoon Paul Stoddart acquired the Minardi team with barely a month to go before the first race of the 2002 season has an F1 programme been put together as hastily as Jordan's. Eddie Jordan was admitting as early as October last year that he was considering closing the doors, and it is known that in the later stages of his reign he was paying the wages of almost 300 staff from his own pocket.

In July last year Eddie Jordan had persuaded a top engineer, Mark Smith, to leave Renault and return to Jordan Grand Prix, where his career had taken off three years earlier. But Smith had arrived too late to make much impact on the EJ15, which is in fact a rehash of last year's EJ15, with a Toyota V10 taking the place of the Cosworth-Ford unit which powered it last year.

Distressingly, not everyone at Jordan is entranced by the new management, and Smith had been one of the first to say goodbye. Several leading roles on the engineering side have been taken over by staff from the Carlin stable, but of course they have exactly as much F1 experience as Narain, ie, none at all. It's going to be a tough year for Narain, and it won't be helped by the massively enthusiastic response at home. What has been his reaction to all this fuss? "I'm not aware of it," he said a little disingenuously: "I don't know what's happening back home and I don't care." I pressed the point without any result, and he switched the subject to the possibility of India getting its own Grand Prix. "As long as I can become established in F1, then I think an Indian GP will follow because the interest has gone up. F1 will need India at some point: India is a huge market and I am sure Bernie [Ecclestone] would be interested.

Then he warmed to the subject, and to the calls he's been getting from so many of his supporters. "They're really happy that it's finally happened. The Indian media has been negative [until now], even Overdrive, which said I was now too old. I think it was one of their reporters who said that in his life time he did not expect to see an Indian F1 driver. So... I would happy to go in there [to the Overdrive office] and say, 'Hey, meet the first Indian F1 driver!'" With a father who used to do some rallying and a bit of racing, Narain has support at home. Had there been any advice from that source? "My father just told me to concentrate on the driving and my fitness. As he says, with all the media interest it would be easy to lose my focus. He says that what comes first is to get the job done properly and do it right. He wants to see me finishing races."

How has his mother reacted? "Like any mother, I suppose. This is not the safest sport in the world, I would say, but she has always been OK, ever since she saw the passion I had for motor racing, and how I wanted to do it more than anything else."
Narain and his wife Pavarna have only been married since last summer, but she has been a regular visitor to races in Europe. "We got along well because she understands the sport," he reflects, "and she doesn't mind me going away for long periods. That's working out pretty well."

One of the first priorities for Narain is to find a place to live in England. He used to be based in Woking, west of London, but intends to move further north, to be close to the Jordan factory which faces the main gates of the Silverstone circuit. "Pavarna will be with me on and off, but probably not all the time," he says. When a racing driver graduates to F1 these days, it is expected that he will move automatically to Monaco, where tax rates are low. But Narain doesn't expect to be in the super-tax category for quite a while. "To come from India and to be in F1 is a big thing, and in the long term I would like to think I'll be a millionaire," he laughs. "But right now we're not even close, and we're looking for sponsors. And one thing I can say is that most of the figures published in the Indian press are highly inaccurate." Nor is there any question of him getting any fancy ideas about his personal transport. Naturally, in India, it's a Tata Indica in the garage. In England, though, we suspect he might succumb to one of the attractive offers available to F1 personnel of discounted cars from the likes of Mercedes and BMW.

Although Narain raced against, and sometimes defeated, top drivers who have gone on to great things, including F1, he doesn't count them among his friends. "No, I'm not really in touch with any of them," he says. "But I know Takuma [Sato] quite well, from the times when we drove together in the same Formula 3 team." Sato, whose aggressive style in the fast improving BAR-Honda team is tipped to gain him further attention this year, was Narain's team-mate at Macau in a famous F3 encounter back in 2000.

"I was on pole and he was in second place - and we both crashed," winces Narain. "That was a nightmare, to have a big lead and then to hit a bump and spin off. But that's what you have to expect on a street circuit. The win would have looked great on my CV. Yes, I won the big F3 race in Korea, and it's an important international race, but it doesn't have the same character as Macau." Experiences like Macau, and on the European F1 circuits where Narain has also competed, will help him later in the year. But with so little time before the Australian GP on March 6, he faces the almost impossible task of finding race fitness in a matter of days.

As we all know, F1 is the Everest of motor racing competition, and the acclimatisation it requires is just as rigorous as preparing to climb a Himalayan peak. Even Jacques Villeneuve, who had spent two days in the gym even when he was not racing last year, found when he returned for the last three GPs of the season that his neck muscles were no longer up to the job.

Narain can only hope that his physical preparation will see him through his first few F1 races. "We have a full-time fitness specialist at Jordan and I'm already working with him. We obviously have to work hard on my neck muscles, and the best way to do that is to be physically driving the car. I hope I'll be OK in time for the first race, but we are allowed ten millimetres of padding [in the cockpit surround], so I may have to use that.

"Yesterday, through the Beckett's complex at Silverstone, we were pulling five and a half 'g,' according to the instrumentation. In the Nissan World Series last year we were pulling four 'g' through the Estoril corner at Magny-Cours. You have to get used to it. It's all part of the F1 learning curve. The more I drive, the easier it will be." The races in the Nissan series are only half the distance of a Grand Prix, and although Narain has experience from the Formula Nippon series in Japan, where races lasted an hour or more, that was two years ago. If he lasts to the end of a Grand Prix, watch his head, which he will feel is trying to drop off his shoulders. It will not be comfortable.

There is also the question of learning circuits, a task made harder by the fact that the first three races (Australia, Malaysia and Bahrain) are at venues he hasn't even seen. "Yes, it's going to be hard, I know, because I only know about half of the GP circuits. We get about two hours [on Friday], and on the ones I don't know I am just going to have to do the best I can."

Despite the team having so many new elements, Narain is a little more confident about the task of getting his car correctly set up than he is about being able to develop his neck muscles.

"I have a very good race engineer, Dominic Harlow, who's been with Jordan for a long time. He knows the 2004 car well, and that's good because the 2005 Jordan is not a big change from that, it's only an interim design adapted to the 2005 rules package. I'm expecting him to work out a good set-up to help me."

Narain already feels happy about the Toyota engines which power this year's Jordan. The specification of the V10s is virtually the same as for the units used by the works team, and Toyota's F1 engines have a fine reputation for reliability. Difficult as it was to judge, Narain liked what he found. "It had been a long time since I was in a racing car, so it felt really quick. The feeling in the paddock is that the Toyota is a good engine. It's been reliable so far and we can only hope it stays that way."

Like all drivers competing for the World Championship, he will be racing this year under rules which restrict a driver to one engine for two races and two sets of tyres for qualifying and the race. How does he think he will cope with that? "I realise that it will be important to avoid locking up wheels, which will put a flat spot on the tyres and stuff up the rest of your race. I guess most people will take it easy in the first lap, for example, and anyway we are looking for finishes. The new rules are really challenging but we can only wait and see what happens. Fortunately I am used to similar restrictions, because in Formula 3 and the Nissan World Series we had only one set of tyres for the weekend." As we prepared to part company, Narain was making plans to dash between testing in Spain and attending a presentation of the car in Moscow.

"I hope we get a good couple of days at Barcelona," he said. "It is just unfortunate that everything has happened so late. It leaves us only the minimum amount of time to prepare.

"I don't even know mister Shnaider yet. I will be meeting him next week, in Moscow, where there will be a presentation of the car. On the racing side, the important thing is that I know the guys who look after the cars, especially Colin Kolles, the managing director. Colin worked with Trevor Carlin and knew me from Formula 3. He has been pushing very hard for me to move into F1." Finally, I ask, how conscious does he expect to be of the hopes that his country will have of him? Will he be able to concentrate purely on the car and your racing?

"Once in the car I don't pay attention to anything except the race," he says. "As you say, it is a matter of sitting there, concentrating and getting my job done. "Yes, this is a big story for Indian race fans, but I have to make sure that I do the best that I can. I will just look after the driving part. I'm in Formula 1, and that alone makes me very proud to be Indian."