Narain 13th; Burti moves ahead

Meanwhile, Brazilian Luciano Burti of Stewart Racing won his second race of the championship with a start-to-finish run after having gained the pole position in the qualifying rounds on Sunday.

The victory put Burti at the top of the Championship standings with 78 points, ahead of Marc Hynes of Manor Sport (74), Jensen Button of Promatecme Renault (61), Kristian Kolby of Fortec Motorsport and Karthikeyan of Carlin Motorsport (55).

Karthikeyan, supported by Kingfisher, Mobil-1, Tata and JK Tyre, went on an off-track excursion in the very first lap when he locked up the rear tyres of his Dallara F399 Mugen-Honda car going into the Cascades corner.

Having gone off on to the grass, the 24-year old from Coimbatore, who became the first Indian to win an F-3 race last week, lost position and quickly moved down the order after having started eighth on the grid.

Karthikeyan’s best moments over the weekend came in the testing session when he clocked a blistering lap of one minute, 30.416 seconds, just ahead of Burti (1:30.44) and looked good for a third consecutive pole position.

However, in the qualifying round, Burti was the fastest with 1:30.101, while Karthikeyan was off the pace by 0.730 seconds which pulled him to eighth position.

Finishing behind Burti were Kristian Kolby and Matthew Davies, both of Fortec Motorsport.