By IANS,
Kuala Lumpur : Team India’s Narain Karthikeyan failed to finish both sprint and feature races following collisions in the third round of the A1 Grand Prix series, at the Sepang International Circuit here Sunday.
Karthikeyan was involved in a three-car crash during the formation lap of the sprint race as the cars headed out for the rolling start. Later, in the feature race, he was shunted from behind at the first corner and he ended up in the gravel trap.
Meanwhile, Neel Jani (Switzerland) became the fifth different race winner this season following a dramatic sprint race.
As the cars came in formation towards the rolling start, an incident involving the US, Brazil and India brought out the red flag. The pack appeared to pick up pace as it approached the start line, but then backed off causing a concertina effect towards the back of the field.
The US car of Marco Andretti and the Brazilian car of Felipe Guimarães took it in turn to climb over the back of Karhtikeyan’s car, scattering debris across the pit straight.
France’s Loïc Duval finished second ahead of a charging Earl Bamber for A1 Team New Zealand.
“I’m disappointed. You can say it’s unavoidable but at the time I thought everyone was going and I could only see two rows ahead of me. I couldn’t see ahead of the whole field. I was about to grab fourth gear, and as soon as the rear tyres were hooking up that was when I needed to be stopping the car so there was no hope.”
“Once you are committed, you are kind of stuck with it. No one was to blame, it was just racing, but ultimately I crashed out two cars.”
Later, Team Ireland became the first nation to score two victories this season, as Adam Carroll dominated the feature race. Fillipe A took an excellent second place for Portugal while Andretti finished a great third for the US from eighth on the grid.
Ireland now leads the championship heading into the Christmas break.