'Points Are Points'

Narain Karthikeyan missed a life-time opportunity of apodium finish in the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis, but he did notrue it saying he was happy to score his first championship points for Jordan.

Karthikeyan finished fourth among six drivers as seventeams, using Michelin tyres, pulled out of the Grand Prix at the last momentover tyre concerns yesterday. Only Ferrari, Mindardi and Jordan, all of whom useBridgestone, contested the race.

"Scoring points under the strangest circumstancesever seen in Grand Prix history still feels great," the 28-year-old Jordandriver said.

"These are my first Championship points in FormulaOne and it does not really matter how they come. Points are points. This is thefirst time an Indian driver has scored points in Formula One so I amhappy," he said.

Karthikeyan said even if the field was depleted it wasimportant to finish the 73-lap race and he was pleased that his car was reliablethis weekend.

"Due to the circumstances, our main job was not tomake any mistakes and finish the race. My car was very reliable this weekend andI am very pleased with that," he said.

The Indian rookie, who earned five valuable points forhis team, had his best-ever classification of the year yesterday even as hisJordan teammate Tiago Monteiro of Portugal finished third, taking the team tallyto 11 world championship points.

Karthiyan said he was very happy for Monteiro's first podium finish and that theresults were beyond his expectations. It had lifted his team's spirits, he said."My wish has been fulfilled beyond my expectations -- as well as for myteammate Tiago Monteiro -- and I am very happy for my teammate's firstpodium," he said.

"Both drivers in the team scored points today andthis has raised immensely our team spirit. Not only we both finished the race,but we also scored points. This is so positive and I am so pleased with thewhole situation. I am sorry that Mr Shnaider, the team owner, was not with us tosee this result," he said.

The result gives the team a good number of data to workon when flying back to Europe as they will be testing next week in Barcelonaprior to the French Grand Prix and Silverstone Grand Prix back-to-back.

Monteiro said he had a mixed feeling about yesterday'scontroversial race but echoed Karthikeyan's views that it was still important totouch the finish line which needed similar effort as in a normal race.

"I have mixed feelings as it was a strange racewith no one being there. However, for me, it was still a race. I had to fightwith my teammate and competitors at the beginning and push as hard as in anormal race. The most important thing was to finish," he said.

PTI