Karthikeyan conquers Korea

Indian sensation Narain Karthikeyan sped to a dominant victory in the International Formula Three Korea Super Prix at Changwon City Raceway, South Korea, on Sunday, November 26. After taking pole position on Saturday, the Carlin Motorsport racer led both legs of the event from start to finish.

Karthikeyan had too much wheelspin at the start of the race, which allowed fellow front-row starter Tiago Monteiro to challenge him into the first corner. But the Indian driver stayed in front and soon pulled away, establishing a comfortable lead, before easing off and controlling the race.

It was a much-needed win for Karthikeyan, who said: "In the first couple of laps, my car was working very well, so I worked really hard to get the gap up to about three-and-a-half seconds. The only problem was that on the second or third lap I hit a patch of oil and got out of shape, but other than that it was fine."

Portuguese star Tiago Monteiro held second from the green light to the chequered flag. "I would really like to thank the team for giving me a good car for the race, because I had to resist a lot of pressure from the guys behind me," he said afterwards.

The main focus of the race was on a battle for third between Patrick Freisacher and Fortec Motorsport's Gianmaria Bruni, which raged right behind Monteiro's ASM-Elf Dallara.

The hard-charging Freisacher held the final place on the podium for most of the race, but was pushed all the way by Bruni. The Austrian drove a cool defensive race, which meant Bruni was unable to pass, but going into the hairpin on the last lap, the Italian nudged him into a spin.

Although both drivers came to a halt, amazingly, both were able to restart the race before being overtaken, but with Bruni now ahead of the Team Opel BSR driver, which is how it stayed until the chequered flag.

There was disappointment for Jonathan Cochet, who finished third in the first race but retired in race two with a steering problem.

After the Frenchman's retirement, Peter Sundberg took a strong fifth, ahead of Andre Couto, who had been forced to battle up from 18th on the grid after problems in qualifying. Sixth place meant that Couto claimed the Macau-Korea Challenge for the driver who scores the best race finishes in both of the end-of-season classics.

After Karthikeyan's performance, he must be ruing the error In Macau, which lost him the opportunity of dominating both meetings.

Britain's Andy Priaulx was tipped out of the first race on the very first lap by an over-eager Tomas Scheckter, but the Manor Motorsport team repaired the car for the second race, when Any came through from the back of the grid to take 16th place. Unfortunately he did not feature in the overall classification, due to his failure in the first race.