Karun Chandhok put his poor form in sprint races to one side at Hockenheim to score victory in the latest rounds of the GP2 season.
The iSport International man has endured a wretched run of form in sprint races so far this year but put that to one side to win in Germany as team-mate Bruno Senna ensured a double podium finish for Paul Jackson's team.
The Indian racer had qualified in tenth place on the grid for the feature race and quickly climbed up to seventh place – making up a further position after his mandatory pitstop. Chandhok then pitted for wet tyres when rain started to fall and slipped back to finish in eighth place, although that in turn gave him pole position for Sunday's sprint race.
“Things went well in the first half of the race, although there wasn't a great deal happening on the track,” he said. “I pushed like hell during the laps coming up to my pit stop – that and a good ‘out' lap enabled me to gain a place on Javier Villa. I was able to maintain a decent pace even though I had one or two problems with my brakes – on one lap that almost caused me to run off at the Sachskurve. I'd pretty much accepted that I wasn't going to gain any more ground when it began to rain. Ultimately that dropped me a place or two, but it was the safest option in the conditions.”
Chandhok's hopes of a win in the sprint race were hit at the start when he lost out to Lucas di Grassi off the line but he stayed close to the Renault
F1 test driver and battled past di Grassi into the Mercedes Arena to reclaim the lead. From there, he held off the challenge of Andreas Zuber, who managed to get into second place, to celebrate his first sprint race points of the season with a maximum score.
![Karun Chandhok - iSport International [pic credit: GP2 Series Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/459159.jpg)
