MUMBAI, June 8 - Indian Narain Karthikeyan's role as test driver with
Williams should help him to remain in Formula One for a third successive year in
2007, team boss Frank Williams said on Thursday.
"He has become much more consistent and is delivering very, very high quality
and most useful testing miles for us," Williams said.
"It is another step in his career on his way back into a F1 cockpit,"
Williams said in a video conference with Indian journalists from the team base
in Oxfordshire, England.
The 29-year-old Karthikeyan became India's first Formula One driver with
Jordan (now Midland) last year and scored points when he finished fourth in the
six-car U.S. Grand Prix.
However, he failed to retain his seat and was signed by Williams as a second
test driver.
Austrian Alexander Wurz is the reserve driver who figures in Friday practice
at the races but the Indian is hopeful he will have done enough to regain a
driver's slot next season.
"Moving here from Jordan, I think it is a better step for me. I have a lot to
learn, so working with this team with a lot of success helps me with my
knowledge as well," he said.
"I am enjoying my role, I do a lot of work away from the Grand Prix
weekends," he said.
Frank Williams said the Indian had to continue improving.
"The chances of Narain being in the team next year are not very high, but by
no means impossible," he said.
"But we also hope that by Narain doing the testing he does, interest will
awaken again in other teams and if another team wants to use Narain in racing we
will not stand in his way."
"We've found out for ourselves in the testing which we have done with Narain
that he is very quick," he said. "We also found him to be a little bit erratic.
"What we have seen since he began with us is that he has become much more
consistent."
