Greater Noida: Narain Karthikeyan was having a good day. He was faster than his teammate Daniel Ricciardo in the final practice on Saturday morning and had maintained a consistent pace in qualifying to finish ahead of the Virgin Racing cars. But that bubble burst when the stewards handed him a five-place grid penalty for impeding Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes at Turn 10 during qualifying.
"I'm in a bad mood," he said referring to the stewards' decision. "You have to maintain one racing line to avoid the dust, so how exactly could I have been impeding another car?"
The HRT Formula One Team doesn't have the fastest car but on Saturday, like everybody else, they also managed to improve their times every time the cars came on track. The back-markers are usually six seconds slower than the leaders Red Bull Racing but on Saturday the difference was reduced to 5.8 seconds. Not much but for a team like HRT but they'll take that with a smile. And Karthikeyan was happy with what he was able to do in the car.
"I had a fantastic qualifying session, no doubt about it," he said, sounding upbeat again. "We beat the Virgin cars and it could have gone either way between my teammate and me. The difference is less than one-tenth of a second. I'm driving really well and I'm feeling good in the car."
The Indian team, Sahara Force India had a good day at the office as well with Adrian Sutilclaiming P8. Paul di Resta struggled with understeer and qualified 12th. Vijay Mallya sounded pleased after the session at the team's motor home.
"At the end of the day we brought everything we had for this race. We did an aero upgrade, saved new engines for this race. I was hoping that both cars would get into Q3. The free practice performance certainly indicated that could happen. Paul had an unfortunate qualifying outing but Adrian put up a great show today that demonstrates what this car is capable of. We're only behind the Red Bulls, McLarens and Ferraris and one Mercedes. That's a good thing and at our home Grand Prix that's very essential," Mallya remarked, eyeing potential points.
Sutil, whose call for a quick driver lineup decision has been heeded to by Mallya, was happy with his performance. "This is the maximum we could've achieved today. It was an important session for us," he stated.
