Karun
Chandhok

Karun Chandhok was born in Madras, now Chennai, in 1984. He won the Indian national title in Formula Maruti in 2000 and the Formula 2000 Asia championship in 2001. From 2002 he raced for T-Sport in British Formula 3. He finished sixth in the National class in 2002 and third in 2003, then stepped up to the main class in 2004 and ended the season 14th. In 2006 he won the first Formula V6 Asia by Renault championship, taking seven wins from twelve races.

Chandhok moved up to GP2 in 2007 with Durango and won a sprint race at Spa-Francorchamps. In November he spent two days testing for Red Bull Racing in Barcelona. In 2008 he drove for iSport alongside Bruno Senna, won one race and finished tenth in the standings. He raced for Ocean Racing Technology in 2009, with third place at Silverstone as his best result.

In 2010 he joined HRT as Senna's team-mate and became the second Indian driver in Formula One after Narain Karthikeyan. His debut in Bahrain ended in a crash after one lap. In Australia he finished 14th, the team's first classified result. After ten races Sakon Yamamoto replaced him from the German Grand Prix onwards. Chandhok ended the year 22nd in the championship. In 2011 he was a reserve driver for Team Lotus and drove in free practice in Australia. In Germany he took over from Jarno Trulli and finished 20th and last. It was his eleventh and final Formula One start.

After Formula One he raced in the 2012 World Endurance Championship for JRM Racing with David Brabham and Peter Dumbreck, finishing sixth overall at Le Mans. In 2013 he competed in the FIA GT Series for Seyffarth, and in 2014-15 he drove for Mahindra Racing in the first Formula E season. He works for British broadcasters as an analyst, co-commentator and pit-lane reporter, and has been part of the Sky Sports F1 live team since 2019.

Source: Wikipedia, “Karun Chandhok”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.