Kumar Ram Narain Karthikeyan (born 14 January 1977) is an Indian racing driver from Coimbatore and the first Indian to compete in Formula One. He made his debut with the Jordan team in 2005, returned with HRT in 2011 and 2012, won races for India in the A1 Grand Prix series and spent several seasons in Japan’s top single-seater championship. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2010 and is often called the “fastest Indian”.
Quick Facts
| Full name | Kumar Ram Narain Karthikeyan |
| Born | 14 January 1977, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu |
| Age | 49 |
| Sport | Motor racing |
| Formula One teams | Jordan (2005); HRT (2011–2012) |
| Formula One debut | 2005 Australian Grand Prix |
| Best F1 result | 4th, 2005 United States Grand Prix |
| Other series | British Formula 3, A1 Grand Prix, Le Mans, Auto GP, Super Formula, Super GT |
| Honours | Padma Shri (2010) |
Early Life
Karthikeyan was born in Coimbatore, the centre of Indian motor sport, into an industrial family. His father, G. R. Karthikeyan, was a former national rally champion, and Narain was driving on the family’s land as a small boy. He began racing as a teenager at the Sriperumbudur track near Chennai. His father then sent him to the Elf Winfield racing school in France, where he was a semi-finalist in its competition for young drivers.
Career
The junior ladder
He raced in Formula Vauxhall and Formula Ford in Britain, winning the British Formula Ford Winter Series in 1994, and in 1996 became the first Indian, and the first Asian, to win the Formula Asia championship. From 1998 he competed in British Formula 3, then the main proving ground for future Grand Prix drivers, winning races and finishing fourth in the 2000 championship.
In 2001 he tested a Formula One car for Jaguar at Silverstone, the first Indian to drive one, and later for Jordan and Minardi. He raced in Formula Nippon in Japan and in the World Series by Nissan in Europe, where he won races in 2003 and 2004.
Formula One
In February 2005 the Jordan team signed him. He made his debut at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne on 6 March 2005, finishing fifteenth. At the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis that June, where only six cars started after the teams using one make of tyre withdrew on safety grounds, he finished fourth and scored five points. He was a test driver for Williams in 2006 and 2007.
He came back to the grid with the small Spanish team HRT in 2011, the year of the first Indian Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit near Delhi, where he finished seventeenth before his home crowd, and drove the full 2012 season. The car was the slowest in the field, and he scored no further points.
Other racing
Driving for A1 Team India in the A1 Grand Prix series for national teams, he won the feature race at Zhuhai in China in December 2007, the country’s first victory in the series, and another at Brands Hatch in 2008. He was entered for the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2009 but dislocated his shoulder shortly before the start. He drove in NASCAR’s truck series in the United States in 2010, the first Indian to do so, and was a title contender in the Auto GP series in 2013 with five wins. From 2014 to 2018 he raced in Japan’s Super Formula, and then in Super GT sports cars, winning a non-championship race at Fuji in 2019.
Beyond the Track
He set up a racing academy to train young Indian drivers; Karun Chandhok, the second Indian in Formula One, and others followed the path he had opened. In 2020 he founded a company dealing in used two-wheelers. Tata, Bharat Petroleum and other Indian firms backed him through much of his career.
Personal Life
He is married to Pavarna and lives in Coimbatore. He has said that reaching Formula One from a country with no racing ladder, sponsors or circuits to speak of mattered more to him than the results he could achieve there.
Featured image: Narain Karthikeyan at the Malaysian Grand Prix, April 2011. Photo by Morio, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
