By IANS
Dubai : India’s Formula One hopeful Karun Chandhok was among the top five as the inaugural 2008 GP2 Asia series commenced with a two-day test session over the weekend at the Autodrome circuit here.
Karun, the 24-year old from Chennai driving for last year’s champion team iSport International and in his second year in the GP2 series, was fourth quickest with a time of one minute, 22.547 seconds over 35 laps, as against team-mate Bruno Senna’s 1:22.214 (52 laps) that placed the Brazilian third on the time chart in the third session Sunday.
Later in the day, Karun was fifth quickest at 1:22.841 (27 laps), behind Senna (1:22.416, 46 laps). Karun had clocked 1:24.589 (28 laps) in the second session on Saturday afternoon while Senna, the nephew of former World champion Ayrton Senna, did 1:23.181 (41 laps).
Meanwhile, the second Indian in the fray, Armaan Ebrahim, had a frustrating initiation as he sat out most of the four test sessions due to overheating problems with his engine.
Armaan’s engineers struggled for a full day and a half to rectify the overheating problem and even changed the radiator, the heat exchanger and the water cooling components, but to no effect.
Eventually, it was decided to put Armaan in team-mate Andy Soucek’s car and the teenager spent valuable track time learning the machine and its characteristics. His timing of 1:25.915 would have placed him eighth overall on Saturday’s time chart.
Making his GP2 debut for David Price Racing team, Armaan, the 18-year old from Chennai, ran seven installation laps Saturday morning before the engine acted up.
Soucek, the 22-year old Spaniard, had a best of 1:22.837 on Sunday morning that placed him overall ninth among 26 drivers competing in the series.
Frenchman Romain Grosjean (ART Grand Prix) took the weekend’s honours by posting the quickest time over four sessions with a 1:21.820 on Sunday.
After a day’s break for sightseeing Monday, the drivers get back to the track for two more days of tests Tuesday and Wednesday while the first of the five GP2 Asia series races will be run on Jan 25-26.