Karun Chandhok steers JRM to 7th spot

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Karun Chandhok played a stellar role in JRM Racing’s seventh place finish at the six hours Silverstone race — the fourth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship. In a class — LMP1 — dominated by factory-run teams of Audi and Toyota, the private outfits JRM have been showing solid improvement since their arrival into the premier sportscar endurance series.

Andre Lotterer, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassler, representing Audi’s hybrid car e-tron quattro, reigned supreme. The victory helped Audi seal the constructors’ title in the inaugural year of the championship.

After qualifying an impressive seventh, JRM’s hopes of another top-10 finish looked in trouble when Karun’s teammate Peter Dumbreck spun in the very first lap.

The Scot, however, rejoined the race but had a fight on his hands to regain track position behind a heavy traffic of lower category cars.

When he handed the car over to Karun, an hour and a half into the race, Peter was already back in top-10.

Karun then started the first of his four stints on a confident note. Over the three hours, he piloted the Honda-powered car up the order, first picking off the Strakka Racing of Nick Leventis by a rate of five seconds a lap.

He then set out taking the Rebellion team car and got past for fifth midway through the race. Howe-ver, the Indian spun towards the end of his stint and dropped the team back to seventh. Aussie David Brabham did the anchor leg of JRM.

Karun said: “We’ve definitely moved on from the last event we did in Spa. The speed is better compared to the rest of the privateers — I was able to match the pace of the Strakka and Rebellion for most of my stints.

Then at the end unfortunately I was going into Copse and had to go on the marbles to get past a GT car and lost grip and spun.

It’s looking a lot more positive for Brazil and with a three week gap between here and Interlagos we can really look at everything and work out how to get everything coming together.”

The next round will be held at Interlagos in Brazil on September 15.