Karthikeyan wins 1st race, finishes 5th in 2nd in Nurburgring

Nurburgring: Continuing his strong show in the Auto GP series, Indian racer Narain Karthikeyan recorded his third win of the season when he triumphed in the race one and finished fifth in the race two in round six of the series, here.

Starting from pole position in race one, Narain faced stiff opposition from Italian GP2 driver Kevin Giovesi and his Super Nova team-mate Vittorio Ghirelli, who started with the Indian from the front row.

But the Indian always seemed to have enough in hand to keep the Italian duo at bay and managed to cross the line in the top spot 23 laps later.

"It feels great to win at Nurburgring it is a historic venue and it was amazing to hear the Indian national anthem playing in front of packed grandstands," an elated Narain said.

After leading from the start and opening up a nearly two second gap, Narain pitted on lap 18 for the mandatory tyre change, and the Super Nova crew executed a near-perfect pit-stop to ensure that he maintained his advantage.

"I was praying for decent stop as I haven't had the best luck in the pits this year, but the guys really nailed it this time," he said.

Narain then completed his Nurburgring outing with a fifth place finish in race two of premier single-seater championship. Narain started eighth for race 2 (as per reversed grid) and managed to gain got a good start which enabled him to gain a couple of places but disaster struck at turn one as he was punted into a spin by GP3 racer Tames Pal Kiss.

Having ended up dead last, Narain managed an impressive recovery drive to come through the pack despite limited passing opportunities the 4.5-kilometre long F1 layout presents.

"It was a tough race, we were aiming to finish on the podium at the very least to add to our points haul but the incident at turn one wiped out that possibility," commented Narain.

Narain is now fourth in the standings with 130 points, 26 points behind third-placed Ghirelli (156 points) and 41 points behind leader Kimiya Sato (171 points). The next round of the Auto GP World Series is scheduled at Donington Park on September 1, with the season finale at Brno, Czech Republic on October 6.