The biggest problem I had over the race weekend was that I felt really ill with a fever. It was the first time I had been unwell at a race meeting, and I have to say that paracetamol and adrenaline are a great combination. Most of the time that I wasn’t in the car I was flat on the garage floor, which really isn’t the best way to prepare yourself to compete with some of the best drivers in the world!
Still, we had good pace in qualifying, though I dropped a tenth of a second at the final corner of my best lap. If it wasn’t for that, I’d have been on the front row for sure rather than fourth. The feature race was just frustrating – so many things didn’t work out, and I just missed out on taking the point for fastest lap too.
When I had Romain behind me in the sprint race, I weaved about as much as I could behind the safety car, but there was just no grip when I needed it to defend my place. After that I was a bit irritated to be stuck behind Hiroki Yoshimoto again considering he had caused me to spin the previous day, so when he defended the inside I went for the outside. I was pleased it came off, and I believe it looked good on the TV as well! I don’t know if we actually touched or not, but it was close…
I then started closing on Fairuz Fauzy for second place, but I was missing second and third gear in the closing stages, so I just wanted to bring it home and get on the podium. It was a shame because I was easily half a second faster than Fauzy, but every time I started to close I would miss another gear and it would drop me back again.
It was a tough week for the team with the heavy schedule of testing and the race weekend, but Bruno and I worked really well with the engineers to move forward and in the end we were both very competitive. The cooler winter weather and surface in Dubai wasn’t really suited to our car as much as ART Grand Prix’s, so to get a podium out the weekend was a good start to the season under the circumstances.
![GP2 front-runner Karun Chandhok chats to iSport International team-mate Bruno Senna [pic credit: Karun Chandhok]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/429657.jpg)
