A1| Grand Prix| Narain Karthikeyan| India

First win for A1 Team India
Sunday, December 16, 2007


A1 Team India’s Narain Karthikeyan paid tribute to his superb pit crew taking his and the team’s first-ever A1GP race win in an incident-packed Feature race at Zhuhai International Circuit in China.

Karthikeyan was joined on the podium by New Zealand’s Jonny Reid, who started from tenth on the grid, and South Africa’s Adrian Zaugg, who finished third.



The 30-year-old Indian driver, who started from third on the grid, took the lead from New Zealand during the second pit stop window on lap 29. Despite a huge amount of pressure and some excellent racing from Reid, Karthikeyan held off the New Zealander’s Black Beauty racecar and crossed the line to score India’s first A1GP success.

After the race, a delighted Karthikeyan said: ‘The team has been working really hard at pit stop practices and they’ve done a really good job this weekend. Both the pit stops were excellent. Unfortunately I got stuck behind Pakistan on the out lap of my second stop, so I couldn’t push, but I came out just ahead of Jonny. There was a lot of pressure towards the end but then his tyres went off as well as mine and then we were equal - after that I just got the job done.’