Narain Karthikeyan and Team India put up a commendable performance to overcome a series of unfortunate incidents and snatch two points at the South African A1GP in Durban on Sunday.
Having managed a 15th position in the Sprint Race, Karthikeyan, driving a spare car, produced a gutsy performance to finish ninth in the Feature Race in his first race at the Durban street circuit.
"It was a disastrous weekend to be honest. A lot of it was out of our control, we were chasing a problem that was very difficult to solve," Karthikeyan said.
"The engine mountings were broken, and by the time we found out, it was too late to fix our race car, so we had to use a spare instead.
"The spare car didn't feel quite right, it took me a couple of laps to get used to the handling, and it felt underpowered compared to my race car.
"It turned out to be unreliable as well, when the drive shaft broke just before the end of the race.
"But the team did a great job to get the car ready for the Feature race and we managed to collect a couple of points."
The team's qualifying session on Saturday had been affected by an accident, which undid a second fastest time in the opening lap and Karthikeyan had to start the 20-minute Sprint Race from 21st position.
The 29-year old Indian then discovered damage to his steering but a start from the pit lane helped him avoid a first corner incident that threw a few other cars out of the race.
After several more accidents and retirements, the Indian car finished the Sprint race in 15th, the position the team took for the 70 minute Feature Race.
Then the team discovered the engine mountings were fractured. Unable to fix the problem on the India car in time, the team did an outstanding job to switch the gearbox, suspension and settings to a back-up A1GP car.
With only minutes to spare the team made it on to the track for the Feature race grid.
The Feature race was no less chaotic than the rest of the weekend, with the A1 Team India car the innocent victim in a first corner accident.
Recovering, Karthikeyan was running in 9th place when a drive shaft failure ended his race, three laps from the end.
However, with more than a three lap gap to the next car, the team retained ninth place, ahead of A1 Team Pakistan.
A1 Team India will take a four week break before the next round of the season in Mexico, on 25th March.
