Karthikeyan finishes 11th in NASCAR race

Narain Karthikeyan, after his exceptional showing in Charlotte previous month, brought the momentum with him to the Texas Motor Speedway, finishing 11th in the WinStar World Casino 400 here to register season-best performance.

Following a strong show during Thursday's practice sessions, Karthikeyan, in the No 60 SafeAuto/Starbeast Motorsports Chevrolet Silverado, hit the track and qualified for the 19th spot, just 0.6 seconds behind the pole sitter.

Karthikeyan kept the 19th position for the first segment of the race, despite losing communication with his team because of a radio malfunction that was repaired after the first pit stop.

During the next stint in the race, he was faster than the trucks in front and steadily made his way through the field up to 16th position. With the race running caution-free for an extended period of time, the crew of the No 60 truck decided to make a green flag pit stop. Unluckily, as soon as Karthikeyan got out of pits there was a caution flag which caused him to go a lap down.

Karthikeyan continually ran fast times through the final laps, making his way up to 12th position. On Lap 164, the No 33 and No 81 trucks got tangled down the backstretch and Karthikeyan eluded disaster as he narrowly missed the No 81 truck when it slid down the track. In the final three laps of the race, Karthikeyan piloted the No 60 truck into eleventh place, logging his best ever NASCAR finish.

"We did a good job today considering it is basically our second race on a 1.5 mile oval. It is my best finish so far, but more than that, I gained much more confidence driving the truck and racing with the fast group of cars.

"I struggled a little bit with the restarts because I couldn't get up to speed as fast as I wanted, but after a few green flag laps I could get in a rhythm and was faster than a handful of trucks in front of me," said Karthikeyan after the race.

Karthikeyan will race in six more NASCAR truck races this season. His next race will be at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Indianapolis, Indiana on July 23.