Chandhok: “My first weekend is Melbourne…”

Karun Chandhok says that the Australian GP will be the real start of his F1 career, following his frustrating debut for Hispania in Bahrain.

The Indian spent most of the Sakhir weekend hanging around waiting for his car to be readied, and when it finally was he ran its installation laps in qualifying. He then missed the buzz of being on the grid for the first time when he started the race from the pitlane, only to crash out.

“For me my first weekend is Melbourne,” Chandhok told this blog. “In Bahrain there’s been plenty of activity in the garage, but not much on the track! Over the weekend we did just four laps in qualy. We had fuel on board, we had the safety map for the engine because it was an installation run, and I wasn’t really in qualy mode.”

Both HRTs started from the pitlane, ostensibly because they had dropped out of parc ferme and thus been able to change parts and set-up. It also meant they didn’t have to make a proper start, something that has been saved for Melbourne.

“We changed a lot of stuff because we hadn’t run the car at all. In qualy I did installation laps and after installation laps you have to take the car and check it out. So we started from the pits because we’d changed some stuff on the car. For my car it was a no brainer. We staggered the cars, so Bruno went out before me. We didn’t even wait at the end of the pitlane, we went out just to get going.”

Alas Chandhok did only one flying lap before crashing out: “I just caught a bump. Obviously we’d done no set-up work, we hadn’t done anything, just a rollout. So the car was not set-up for the bumps. I found a bump that I didn’t know existed because I’d not driven the new part of the circuit more than four timed laps in qualy. It just hit a bump, the car bounced more than I expected, got on the exit kerb. I had no steering, I was on the plank, and I just spun. It just kissed the barrier.

“I wasn’t pushing, I just caught a bump at the wrong angle and it spat me off, just a legacy of not running the laps. It was just not doing enough mileage. We were not racing during the weekend, we were participating and we were testing.”

Chandhok knew the ‘old’ section of the Bahrain track, but he’ll have to learn Albert Park as well as trying to put some miles on the car. He did at least win a lot of fans over the Bahrain weekend, and his underdog status means that he will probably have a few people cheering this time…