Q: What did you take away from your first ‘minor-miracle’ week-end?
Karun Chandhok: We made the first big step which was to get to Bahrain. Everyone from Colin to the engineers and especially the mechanics worked so hard the whole weekend it was incredible. Now it’s time to chase the next stage and get reliable for which we are pushing our hydraulics partners very hard to sort the problems from Bahrain.
Q: What are your thoughts on the team?
First weekend was tough for both the team and me. We have some great people on board in the engineering side and I have already established a good relationship with them. The mechanics around my car are also very good. Now we should make sure we work together to achieve our objectives of reasonable reliability by Shanghai and then performance from Barcelona.
Q: How does it feel to be an F1 driver?
It is a special feeling to be one of the 24 drivers on the F1 grid. This was my dream as a child and it is great to know that all the sacrifice and hard work has paid off. To be honest the first weekend was a bit of a blur because of how little running we did !
Q: Any one special you met since you are in F1? What have you discussed?
I finally met my all time favorite driver Alain Prost at the Bahrain GP which was fantastic. We talked about the issues I was having we the car and he wished me well for the season.
Q: What are the goals in Melbourne, one of the longest street circuits on the 2010 calendar?
Our target is to be reliable and finish the race. I have a done a total of 7 laps in F1 so looking forward to learning more about the car. It looks like a tricky circuit with lots of areas to make small errors so learning it as quickly as possible will be important.
Q: Have you ever driven at Melbourne before?
No this will be my first time so it will be important to get as much running as we can.
Q: How do you prepare for circuits where you have never driven before?
I usually like to first cycle around the track to familiarize myself with it and after that walk around the track with my race engineer. I did a day in a simulator at my old GP2 team iSport so I know the layout and also the HRT F1 engineers gave me some simulation data and information.
Q: Have you ever visited Australia before?
Yes, just once. My brother was at university in Adelaide for 3 years so I came to see him.
Q: How have you physically prepared for the Australian GP?
I’ve been training back in England and India before coming out here.
Q: How has the response been from India?
The response from India has been overwhelming. My twitter page and website has been swarmed with people wishing me luck which really means a lot to me. The media response has been fantastic as well and I’ve had kind words of support from some great Indians like Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev and Shah Rukh Khan as well as captains of industry like Mr.Raghupati Singhania, Mr.Pawan Munjal, Mr.Samir Gaur and political supremos like Mr. Rajiv Shukla and Mr. Arun Jaitley.
Q: Have you had a chance to go back to India?
I was in India for three days enroute to Melbourne and the hype is India was lot bigger than I expected. Right now we’re trying to manage expectations given our current situation but it’s still great to see the support.
Q&A provided by Hispania press office.
