Indian race driver Narain Karthikeyan had a good weekend, finishing third and close fourth in two races at the 2004 World Series Nissan Championship at Zolder, Belgium.

The Indian is now fifth in the championship standings with 24 points to his credit after collecting ten points from the first and another eight from the second race on Sunday.

With not many points separating Karthikeyan and the championship leaders, the Tata RC Motorsport driver will be looking forward to putting up a good performance in his next outing at the French Formula One track Magny-Cours on May 23, a statement from Tata Racing said on Monday.

Karthikeyan, who had clocked a good lap of 1 minute, 21.5 seconds during the qualifying rounds, got into trouble when the electronic engine management system malfunctioned, resulting in a loss of track time in the qualifying laps.

"The car was very good on Thursday. But the problems on Friday meant that we lost the balance ahead of Saturday's first qualifying session, when we got very bad under steer," Karthikeyan said.

"We managed to get the car back to how it was on Thursday in time for the second qualifying session but what was going to be a very fast lap was ruined by a problem on the final sector with down change. And red flags (there were three in the 30-minute second session) prevented any other chances to run a good lap," he said.

In the first race, the Indian finished behind Tiago Monteiro and Enrique Bernoldi, while in the second race, he finished behind Monteiro, Helkki Kovalainen and Tristan Gommendy.