Narain to miss season opener

India's Narain Karthikeyan will miss Sunday's season-opening F1 Australian GP as his Hispania car, which he drove without any pre-season test, failed to clear the cut-off timing in the qualifying session on Saturday.

India's Narain Karthikeyan will miss Sunday's season-opening F1 Australian GP as his Hispania car, which he drove without any pre-season test, failed to clear the cut-off timing in the qualifying session on Saturday.

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Karthikeyan and teammate Vitantonio Liuzzi were ruled ineligible for the race because under the re-introduced '107 per cent' rule, they were more than seven per cent slower than session winner Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull. With the cut-off time set at 1:31.266, Liuzzi could manage only 1:32.978 and Karthikeyan had 1:34.293. Liuzzi missed the cut-off time by around 1.7 seconds while Karthikeyan was slow by over three seconds.