Karun Chandok sixth
in British F3 race
Indian teenager Karun Chandhok gave yet another spellbinding peformance to finish sixth in Round five of British F3 2002 Championship at Croft Circuit, England, on Sunday evening.
Though heavy rains played spoilsport and one race had to be cancelled, Karun, competing with Team T Sport, finished a credible sixth and retained his overall fourth position in the championship.
Testing went well for the young Indian and though he was ninth after the first qualifying session, he came up with a stormy lap at the end of the second qualifying to jump up to fifth on the grid.
The gap separating third place to ninth was under three tenths of a second. All through Friday's testing and Saturday's qualifying, the rain clouds hovered over with scattered showers, and it looked more and more likely that there would be a wet race.
The first race of the weekend was held on Saturday evening. At the start it was dry, with the clouds getting darker and darker, and by lap two it rained heavily, causing the track to flood. The race was stopped and all the cars were called into the pits to change to rain tyres, but by the time the race was set to re-start, the rain stopped and it appeared that the track would dry up.
With tyre choice virtually a gamble in these notorious weather conditions, Karun and his engineer Alan Woodhead decided to play a game of follow-the-leader and made a choice based on what the championship front runners Adam Carroll and Clivio Piccione were doing -- dry tyres.
Unfortunately, the track was too wet and carnage prevailed -- Carroll and more than half the field failed to finish. Karun survived some scary moments and brief spins to finish sixth in his first F3 race in the rain and retain his fourth place in the championship.
Conditions got so bad for race two on Sunday that the organisers felt it was too dangerous for the drivers and cancelled the race. This means that there will be an extra race held later on in the year to make up for this.
With only nine of the 26 races finished this year, there's plenty of time for Karun to progress.
