Having stated prior to the weekend that he would be looking to avoid the snakes known to live around the Sentul circuit in Indonesia, Christian Bakkerud instead found that it was his rivals on track who bit in the latest round of the GP2 Asia series.
The Super Nova driver was hoping to kick-start his season in the second meeting of the campaign and started the weekend well when he qualified in fifth place at a venue most of the field hadn't seen prior to the brief practice session.
However, the strong qualifying performance didn't translate into a good race result as Bakkerud was forced into retirement in the early stages.
“I was really pleased with my qualifying and made a decent start and held my position into the first corner,” he reflected after the feature event. “I was already thinking in terms of attacking the cars in front when bang I got hit from behind by Bruno Senna which turned me around causing one of the other GP2 cars to fly across me resulting in mayor damage to my car. My mechanics are now working hard on repairing the car for tomorrow's sprint race.”
“Obviously I'm massively disappointed because we qualified really well and I'm feeling really confident in the Super Nova car and I also sensed a podium was a real possibility in today's feature race.”
Forced to start from the back for the sprint race, Bakkerud saw his chances hit when large portions of the race were run behind the Safety Car, and a number of instances of contact with other drivers meant he was only able to take the flag in 14th place to end a difficult weekend.
“It was completely impossible to see a thing in the race today with the rain and the track being so dirty,” he said. “I started 21st and completed the race in 14th. In the very few race laps we had I overtook two cars and on both occasions it was contact. The first one with a car I truly don't know who it was, which deranged my steering by about 30 degrees.
![Christian Bakkerud - Super Nova Racing [pic credit: GP2 Series]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/405906.jpg)
