India's Unassuming Formula One Pioneer

Talking to the soft-spoken, matter-of-fact, unassuming Narain Karthikeyan, it is easy to forget that he is currently India's fastest man.

Narain Karthikeyan is the only Indian in Formula One this season.

It is also easy to forget that Karthikeyan, 35, is a trailblazer for world motorsport, as the first Indian to race in Formula One, the highest level of racing, when he began driving for the Jordan team in 2005.

“I was the first guy from India to be in Formula One, nobody had been to this territory before,” he said in a recent interview. “So it was all inventing it myself. Being a pioneer is always difficult, and I'm glad to have got another chance to race in Formula One.”

After that 2005 season, he spent several seasons in various other series before returning to Formula One last year to race with the HRT team, where he continues this season.

Looking at his results in Formula One, where he has scored points only once - at the U.S. Grand Prix in 2005, when most of the teams did not race because they had dangerous tires - it is also easy to forget that when he raced in the lower series in Europe, he had results to compare with those of such accomplished drivers as the former world champion Jenson Button, with whom he raced in Formula 3 in 1999, when Button scored three victories and Karthikeyan scored two.

He was, in fact, the first Indian to win any racing series in Europe when he won the Formula Ford Festival winter series in 1994.

Formula One is another matter. But Karthikeyan still has the same simple and direct way about him. He said competing in his home race near New Delhi this weekend was for him no different than for Button or Lewis Hamilton, both British drivers at the McLaren Mercedes team, when they go to race at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

“Except that we might not even finish on the points,” he said, alluding to a comparison between his team and the Britons, who could expect to win. “You have to keep yourself motivated, you know the country is supporting you, there are a lot of loyal fans out there. And I hope I can do something special. Last year I was 17th, and hopefully I can do better. That is all I can expect.”

The HRT team is one of the weakest - and newest - in the series. After almost three full racing seasons, it has yet to score a single point. But Karthikeyan says he knows his value as a driver.

“When I put everything together, I am as fast as anyone else,” he said, before adding about India again, “But obviously there are a lot of people watching, and that gets to you a little bit. But as you get older and more experienced, you try to calm that down a little bit.”

Karthikeyan's father raced in rallies, winning the South India Rally seven times, and the boy grew up in Coimbatore, which is the motorsport hub of India, where rally cars and other racing cars are built and prepared. Unlike his peers in Formula One, he did not start in go-karts, which were not available in India. He began in a car series, the Formula Maruti series, where he finished on the podium in his first race.

“I was 16 years old, in this formula of cars created out of 40 horsepower Suzuki engine, very basic and very small,” he said. “I think the top speed was 140k or something. Just basics.”

Since he clearly had talent, he next had to go to Europe to fulfill his ambition to become the first Indian in Formula One. He started in 1992 at Winfield, a top racing school in France that had spawned many French Formula One drivers, including its most successful, the four-time world champion Alain Prost. The competition was fierce, and among those who attended with him that year, Karthikeyan was the only driver who eventually made it to Formula One.

After the Vauxhall Junior series and the Ford series in England, he raced in the Formula Asia series in 1995 and 1996, when he won the series. In 1997, he again raced in England, in Formula Vauxhall, and the following two years in British Formula 3. Spotted by Paul Stewart Racing, the team of the son of the triple world champion Jackie Stewart, he was hired to race for that Formula 3 team in 2000, and he finished fourth in the series.

He then raced in Formula Nippon, in Japan, in 2001 before racing three seasons in the Formula Nissan World Series, in Europe, finishing fourth in 2003.

But racing at all levels requires money from its drivers, and Karthikeyan said it was not easy to persuade Indian companies to pay for a sport so little known in his country. Still, early on he gained the support of the Tata group of companies, and Tata eventually supported his entry into Formula One.

“My first Formula One test was with Jaguar,” he said. “I didn't get the break, and then I tested with Jordan the same year, in 2001, but we needed backing. But in India when you convert that kind of money 60 odd times from the dollar to the rupee, it's a lot of money for India. So people were not used to spending that kind of money, but Tata stood by me and supported my entry into Formula One.”

Tata, based in Mumbai, grew as a global conglomerate at the same time as Karthikeyan's career grew, and it helped him fund his second stint in Formula One as well. The HRT team's other driver is Pedro de la Rosa, a Spaniard who was a similar racing pioneer for his country, beginning in 1999. Then his compatriot Fernando Alonso came along and won the world title twice, in 2005 and 2006.

When asked if he saw himself that way and whether he could see an Indian world champion on the horizon, Karthikeyan was skeptical.

“There is a lot of interest, but I don't know about future world champions,” he said. “But everyone is pushing. It is a very difficult sport.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 27, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.