DRIVER UPDATE : Formula V6 Asia : Karun Chandhok

Indian racing sensation Karun Chandhok’s JRM team got off to a great start in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) opening round at Sebring, USA after posting the 5th fastest time in the opening day of practice. The JRM team, with drivers Karun Chandhok, Peter Dumbreck and David Brabham got their first running in the all new JRM Honda Performance Development (HPD) ARX-03a with three practice sessions.

While the first two practice sessions were held during the day the final session was held at night.

The JRM team gradually saw improvement as each session went by and finished the final practice session in a strong 5th position. Chandhok, who has been in Formula One over the last two years with Hispania Racing and Team Lotus F1 is extremely satisfied after his first sportscar outing and excited about his first ever endurance race.

“This is a totally different experience for me and I am looking forward to my first ever endurance race. The atmosphere here is amazing and I can really feel the history here at the 60th running of this race. There is so much for me to learn but the team seems happy with what I've done so far and my team-mates have been very helpful. They have done a lot of endurance racing and this has been useful for me. My first night experience was enjoyable and now will work with the engineers to further improve the car. The main aim for Saturday is to get to the end and see if we can get in the top 5”

The Sebring 12hrs race series will feature 64 entries in multiple classes of cars competing in endurance races, with sports prototypes competing in the Le Mans Prototype categories, and production-based grand tourers competing in the GT Endurance categories. The move to Sportscar endurance racing represents a big shift for Karun from the Formula One machinery.

He added, “The car is very different to a single seater like an F1 or GP2 so I've had to learn to drive something that's 400kg's heavier! However the car has a lot of power and downforce which makes it exciting. To have 64 cars on a 6km track makes it pretty chaotic. I've improved a lot in the traffic and I think my experience in Chennai traffic is coming in handy!”

Prepared by www.karunchandhok.com

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