Telefonica Nissan World Series
Narain on podium!
Overdrive — July, 2002

Narain Karthikeyan made amends for his failure in the main feature race in the opening round of the 2002 Telefonica World Series by Nissan when he drove his TATA RC Motorsport car to third in the second round at Jarama. Unlike his brilliant qualifying session in Valencia for the main feature race where he was just 55 thousandths off the pole, this time he qualified tenth, almost a second and a half from pole sitter Ricardo Zonta.

The Telefonica Nissan series is an alternate series to the more expensive-to-run Formula 3000 series and has been created with cars that feature 450bhp Nissan V6 engines with manual gear boxes mounted into. Dallara chassis which have a hint of ground effects in them. This series has a great many talented drivers including F1 refugee Ricardo Zonta and also the 2001 F3000 champion Justin Wilson among the runners.

Narain Karthikeyan drives one of these powerful single seaters for the TATA RC Motorsport team and he has been impressive to date. In the opening round at Valencia he was looking good for a strong placing after starting from the front row but the hectic action in the opening lap saw him nudged from behind by Justin Wilson and it was a lonely race thereafter for the Indian enroute to 10th place after having dropped down to 15^th in the melee and claiming a solitary point for his efforts.

He may not have had the best of luck in the opening round but Narain did make everyone sit up and take notice at Jarama though both driver and car were in fine fettle. The team had its definite colours on the cars and Narain drove well this time keeping out of trouble and benefitting from the misfortunes of the others to take third in the main feature race after starting from 8th on the grid. In the earlier race where he had qualified tenth, he finished in eight pace.

One of the nuances of the Telefonica Nissan World Series is that each and every driver has to stop once in the pits compulsorily for tyres. When Franck Montagny, the series leader muffed his pit stop and was stationary for over a minute, Narain benefited immensely to take his first podium finish of the season. "I hope to climb on to the podium more often," said Narain after the race. Given more testing time in the car, Narain should be able to qualify further up the grid and also be a contender not just for podium finished but the winner’s laurels as well stay tuned for more.