Narain Karthikeyan’s maiden season in Formula One, in 2005, saw Fernando Alonso eclipse Emerson Fittipaldi as the youngest ever World Drivers’ champion.
All these years later, Alonso is still going strong. Only a few days ago, the 41-year-old Alonso signed a multi-year contract with the Aston Martin F1 Team.
Karthikeyan believes that the Spaniard has enough spark left to keep going for another decade.
“Alonso has a lot of motivation left in him; he is beating drivers half his age. It is incredible. He has left Formula One to do a bunch of other things like IndyCar, but he has always returned strongly to Formula One. He hasn’t slowed down one bit. I don’t see Alonso going down for the next 10 years,” Karthikeyan said, at the launch event of Turtle Wax Car Care Studios here on Wednesday.
On four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, who announced his retirement recently, Karthikeyan said. “There is no doubt that Vettel is a great driver. Vettel made the right call with respect to retirement, as a driver tends to lose motivation when he moves to smaller teams.”
It has been a decade since an Indian driver featured on the Formula One grid. Jehan Daruvala was tipped to be next in line, but an inconsistent show in the 2022 FIA Formula 2 Championship thus far has dented his chances of making the cut. After a bright start to the campaign, the Prema Racing driver has fallen to fifth in the driver standings.
“It will be a long wait (to see an Indian driver in F1). Jehan needed a very good F2 season with race victories, but that has not happened. His season has been average. There are a lot of drivers with big budgets and better results waiting to get that F1 break. It is a very competitive field. I don’t see it happening for Jehan next year,” Karthikeyan said.
