It took a while, but finally iSport boss Paul Jackson and the rest of the team were able to come to a deal with my dad and me which worked out well for all of us. I must admit it looked shaky on a number of occasions, but I finally got a call from Paul when I was on my way to Heathrow airport to go back to India! The most important part was to get the deal sorted for the European series, but to be able to also do the new GP2 Asia Series with the team was a real bonus and gave us a chance to all get a good understanding of our working methods before heading to Europe.
The guys in the team are real racers at heart. The pre-season tests were reasonably good – we had a couple of good days and a couple of not-so-good days – but I built up a good working relationship with the engineers and my team-mate Bruno Senna in a short space of time, and I think that is helping us as a team. Everyone has been very welcoming, and we all got along very well right from the first day.
I’m getting along really well with my engineer Richard Selwin, and it’s also good that Bruno and I seem to want similar things from the car. That has been very useful in developing the new car for the GP2 Series, because we can be quite sure that whatever set-up changes work on one car will generally work on the other one too.
The first round of the GP2 Asia Series in Dubai was a good start to the campaign. Ok, having Romain Grosjean win both the races wasn’t really part of the plan, but both Bruno and I were competitive and our pace was ultimately not that far away from Romain’s. Testing was a bit up-and-down with a few car problems, and then my big shunt on day three made a bit of a mess of our plan, but the boys did a great job getting the car going again the next day.
![GP2 front-runner Karun Chandhok chats to iSport International team-mate Bruno Senna [pic credit: Karun Chandhok]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/429657.jpg)
