I was ecstatic to hear of Narain's move to Williams. At the end of last season , he had three options , 1. Renewal with Jordan / Midland 2. Williams Test drive 3. 1st / 2nd driver for super aguri
with jordan , colin kolles, the team principal wasnt too pleased with narain , especially after their much publicised verbal fight after Monaco '05 . plus , the car was always going to be at the back of the grid . but again the advantage , over test driving for williams was that he would have been on the racing track on sunday and not just on an occasional friday .
with super AGURI , the inexperience of the team , poor machinery and question marks over the team's reliability , strengths , performance and management were enough for Narain to rule out Aguri's team as a option , even thought it would have meant being the team's no.1 or no.2 driver
Williams , with whom Narain had performed exceptionally well during the Jerez testing , were impressed with him . But an impeccable testing record meant the Alex Wurz , expectedly got the test driver's spot. But , Narain can take heart from the fact that it was not his sponsors' backing but his talent and skills and sound feedback which in Sir Frank Williams's own words "left an impression on the williams' engineers" , and eventually got him a place with Williams F1 , albeit a fourth driver
what does a fourth driver's position mean for Narain ? Well , we definitely wont be hearing or seeing much of Narain during the first half of the season , by then the drivers' championship points table should indicate if the williams' drivers stand and chance of the championship or atleast a 2nd or 3rd place . and if this does not happen , then ofcourse , the williams' management may let kathikeyan or Wurz or both drive a few races to salvage some pride for the team in the constructors' table. Of course , this is all speculation and we have to wait for Bahrain(march 12) to see what exactly happens . But there is no denying that this definitely is an upward step Narain's career. lets hope he does well . Heres wishing the fastest Indian , all the best !
