Narain Karthikeyan witnessed perhaps the worst day in his racing career with Team India getting booted out of both the Sprint and Feature races in the Malaysian A1 Grand Prix in Sepang on Sunday.
In the Sprint Race, as the cars came in formation towards the rolling start, an incident involving USA, Brazil and India brought out the red flag.
The pack appeared to pick up pace as it approached the start line but then backed off and the USA car of Marco Andretti and the Brazilian car of Felipe Guimaraes climbed over the back of Karthikeyan's Indian entry, scattering debris across the pit straight.
Despite the crash at the start, the Indian team got ready to take the grid for the afternoon's Feature race but met a similar fate. Karthikeyan's car was booted out by Team Netherlands and the Indian could not finish the feature race either.
This is the first time in Karthikeyan's career where he could not complete one racing lap across two consecutive sessions.
"We had the pace and were quite confident for a podium finish in the Feature Race. USA started behind us and finished third which could have been us if not for the crash," A1 Team India Principal, Piers Hunnisset rued.
Neel Jani became the fifth different race winner this season as A1 Team Switzerland took victory in the Sprint race, while Team Ireland's Adam Carroll won the Feature race.
