Being Narain Karthikeyan : I had a chance of watching this interview of Narain this noon with Anuradha SenGupta on CNN-IBN and once again I realized what this ordinary looking guy from Coimbatore has managed to achieve. I know, an 18th place finish in the over all driver’s race and ending up among the points in just one race, that too because of sheer luck does not make a good score card.
And why I am writing all this when he wont be driving any of the F1 cars on the race day this season and is just the second test driver with Williams and is having a pretty uncertain future in the sport?
Now consider that the guy comes from a country where till 5 years back F-1 was as alien sport as Sepak Takraw and where the infrastructure for the sport is still negligible ( if one is sane enough to exclude Go-Carting as the preparation ground for F-1), this guy has already achieved a lot. Now take this, there are more astraunauts than F1 drivers till date. Now this shows how difficult is the task to break into that elite group belonging to a country where all the sports, barring tennis and cricket, are as extensively covered as Kabaddi by the media. He has managed to put India on F1 map singlehandedly.
I just hope he will manage to impress the right people with his stint as second test driver with Williams and will be on track again next season.
Your view are 100% correct.
ReplyDeleteNK is a phenomenon in a country like India. His achievement as an F1 rookie goes beyond what one can see from the final drivers standings.
One thing we have to remember is that he lives in a white man's sport where discrimination on non-whites exists.
I am vas from www.starf1.com and great fan of NK. Infact we started the website as a tribute to him and F1.
Our website not only covers F1 but everything Indian. Your blog jus inspired me to invite fellow admirer like U to join us at www.starf1.com