Third consecutive pole for Narain in Auto GP

Nurburgring (Germany): Indian racer Narain Karthikeyan clinched his third consecutive pole position as his side, Super Nova International, locked the front row for the Nurburgring race in the Auto GP World Series, here.

Narain secured pole position with a lap time of 1:18.330, while his Italian teammate Vittorio Ghirelli was two-tenths behind at the Nurburgring Circuit. In the sole 45-minute practice session preceding qualifying, Narain and his Super Nova team worked on sorting the balance on both medium and soft Kumho compounds allocated for the weekend. "We were the first cars out on the track in practice and the circuit was extremely green. But even as the session went on, we weren`t quite able to nail the balance on the medium compound," said Narain, recounting the proceedings of the morning practice session. "I think we were off by about half a second or so, but once we put the soft tyre on in qualifying the car just came alive!" he continued. "Again our aim is to collect the maximum points through the weekend, as we are 42 points behind in the championship and quickly running out of races," said Narain referring to two rounds at Donington and Brno that remain after this weekend. "To start with hopefully we'll able to capitalise on the pole position unlike the last outing at Mugello and take it from there," he said. PTI