The Hindu : Sport : Narain finishes 15th; Fisichella wins Australian Grand Prix

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 07, 2005

Sport

Sport

Narain finishes 15th; Fisichella wins Australian Grand Prix

By Rohit Brijnath

MELBOURNE, MARCH 6. Rival pit crews gawked. A television cameraman came running. An incredulous policeman muttered "unbelievable". Maybe even Renault's Giancarlo Fisichella, after a shower in champagne, briefly peeked out of a window and wondered, "Hey I thought I won this race". Long after the official celebrations at the Australian Grand Prix, bedlam had come visiting pit lane and its cause was Jordan's Narain Karthikeyan.

Clinging to the mesh that separated the track from the pits, joyous faces mashed against the bars, a 200-hundred-odd raucous mob of Indian fans had come to claim their hero. They bellowed, chanted, offered him a beer can and a written proposal on a poster that shouted "Marry me". His wife Pavarna just smiled.

Karthikeyan was drained, his left foot was in agony for in every racing category the right foot uses the brake except here, but he signed, everything, ticket stubs, shirts, dollar notes, caps. He limped away into the paddock to rest as his wife, like some courier of celebration, ferried more flags, shirts, caps for him to autograph. An hour had passed since the race's completion, but the crowd would not disperse and then, like some messiah in yellow overalls, he returned to them again to a roar.

Identity

It was bizarre, it was beautiful, it was understandable. It was not some salute to his performance (though he impressed by finishing 15th in a field of 20), but a declaration of allegiance, a claiming of identity. Sporting worship easily hurdles the barriers of geography and nationality and Indians, at home and elsewhere, have genuflected before Ferrari's prancing horse and kept the faith with McLaren. But to this foreign sport had come an Indian, someone, finally, to call their own.

Yesterday, like always, a nervous anticipation accompanied the start of the Formula One season, anxiety meshed with adrenaline as gleaming chariots fussed over like some precocious child were eventually put to test. Spectators proclaimed team allegiance through their colours, the braver among them forsaking ear plugs for this is a sport as much about sound as sight. A thousand necks snapped to one side in unison as cars appeared and then, like a mirage, were gone, leaving behind only the lingering growl of their engines.

It was a day of dry skies and lips wet with beer, and it was a day of not just of one Formula race but many. Top teams fought each other, lesser teams battled for respect, team-mates jousted for bragging rights; for some victory lay in the positions, for others triumph was found in merely going the distance.

"Bravo, bravo, absolutely perfect race" came the scratchy voice over the Renault team radio into Fisichella's ears as he crossed the finish line and they were words beyond dispute. If pre-race a fighter jet showed off across the skies, then it was surpassed only by the virtuosity of the Italian's ground-level flying for he led emphatically from start to finish for his second career Grand Prix win.

But Fisichella's apparent ease disguised a stern resolve for in the final stages Rubens Barrichello pursued him like a determined stalker, yet every quick question asked by his Ferrari was delivered a faster Renault rebuke. Indeed, with Fernando Alonso in third place, Renault had authoritatively advertised its intentions for the season. Still, Barrichello reminded us that "Ferrari has no crisis" and if he meant it ominously it was taken so.

Ferrari is too experienced to flinch after one loss, and almost predictably even in a contest it did not dominate, like a slighted actress it conspired to hog the attention.

If Barrichello drove brilliantly to hurtle from 11th on the grid (Karthikeyan after the morning's qualifying was 12th) to second, Michael Schumacher was no slouch either. He did not start the morning's qualifying and did not finish the race, but in between he raced from 19th to 8th before he and BMW-Williams' Nick Heidfeld kissed cars and both exited the race in a stalled huff.

Karthikeyan contested, in a sense, another race but his challenges were no less confronting. His struggle was with himself, his team-mate Tiago Monteiro and the chequered flag ("my goal was to finish", he said) and every ambition was met.

A quiet man had written history in a loud car. At race's end, his face was heavy in exhaustion yet radiated satisfaction, for it was a debut worthy of a man who said on Saturday, "The best thing I do is drive, better than anything else in my life."

He began the race with a stutter, overtaken at the start by Monteiro for he said "the lights caught me at the wrong time", but once his team-mate stopped to refuel and Karthikeyan could accelerate without obstacle that small intra-team skirmish was over.

Concentration

His eventual position of 15th was inflated by the Schumacher-Heidfeld accident, but he held fast to his concentration, he said, was miserly with errors, and despite his car's conspicuous limitations suggested he was no impostor among this elite.

As team sporting director Trevor Carlin told The Hindu: "I'm pleased he had the fitness to finish for the first Grand Prix is always tough. With better fitness and a faster car we can go forward."

As evening fell in slow motion, Karthikeyan was merely content to be sitting still for once, dutifully replying as journalists, Dutch, Italian, English, assaulted him with questions, they too perhaps taken by this incongruously unaffected man in an often pretentious sport.

Finally, his time had come, his journey from driving a home-made go-cart designed by his father with moped engine and autorickshaw tyres to this space-age universe of Formula One was complete.

Reminded of this unlikely voyage, Karthikeyan shook his head with a sweet bewilderment and softly said: "Who would have thought this was possible. I was just a boy dreaming."

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