Chandhok relieved to get through quali

Karun Chandhok says he is still coming to terms with the fact that he will make his grand prix debut tomorrow, having feared after practice that he wouldn't get to race in Bahrain at all.The late upheaval at Hispania meant the team was still putting its cars together when it reached the Sakhir track this week, and various problems with Chandhok's machine meant he did not get to run at all prior to qualifying.His hopes of getting on track this weekend started fading, but the team managed to get the car running for qualifying.Having never driven the Hispania before, Chandhok's priority was just to get comfortable and stay out of trouble, so he had no qualms about being 10s off the pace and last on the grid, just behind team-mate Bruno Senna."I still can't believe that we will be on the grid tomorrow," he said."It was not looking good in the morning and I was not sure if we would make it to the qualifying session as well."While Chandhok admitted that the build-up to his grand prix debut had not been ideal, he understood the situation the team had faced over the winter."I didn't expect to be driving the car for the first time in qualifying but as I have always said these are the circumstances and we made the best of it," Chandhok said."For me it was just a string of installation laps and to finish just a second slower than Bruno is definitely a huge achievement."I think I might be the only driver in the history of F1 to go straight into a qualifying session of a race without even having done a shakedown of the car!"Team boss Colin Kolles reiterated his pride in the crew's efforts against the odds this weekend."Our mechanics and engineers worked miracles and were awake for 38 hours preparing for our first outing," he said."Having never run the car before this weekend we have had the usual new car technical challenges which we would normally have solved during pre-season testing."But we are determined to work through this usual process as quickly as possible, even though it may well be in the public eye."In a way, we are treating this race as a test session and this is a great success for the entire team to even be here with both cars running."