Karthikeyan: It's looking pretty good - EXCLUSIVE.

by Russell Atkins

Narain Karthikeyan is upbeat about Williams' chances as the squad heads towards Melbourne for the opening race of the forthcoming Formula 1 World Championship, predicting a far happier 2007 for the Grove-based outfit than was the case last year.

The Indian was at Silverstone today helping to conduct a final shakedown of the FW29 before Williams jets off to Australia, and as team members packed up at the end of the day it was smiles all round.

"It's all going pretty well at the moment," Karthikeyan told Crash.net. "The car is more reliable and faster than last year's, so things are looking pretty good. 2006 was very bad for us, but 2007 should be a lot better. It's certainly a better package."

Williams' greatest cause for complaint in 2006 was a chronic lack of reliability, with a staggering 11 mechanical DNFs, as many as points on the scoreboard at the end of the campaign. With much work having taken place over the winter months to address the relevant woes, this time around Karthikeyan is far more optimistic.

"I think everyone is very happy with the reliability of the car," he asserted. "Obviously we still have to see what happens in the races, because testing is one thing and racing another, but overall it's looking pretty promising.

"We all have high hopes and we are definitely expecting the car to finish in the points in Melbourne."

Despite revealing a desire to participate in the Le Mans 24 Hours later on in the year, the 30-year-old stressed his focus would remain on his grand prix testing duties for the foreseeable future, allied to his outings in A1GP, a challenge he says he is avidly embracing following his points-scoring series debut in New Zealand in January.

"It's not Formula 1 obviously," he admitted, "but it keeps me racing and I'm enjoying it. It's much more relaxed than Formula 1, but some of the drivers are very quick and it's quite a good level of racing."