Karthikeyan enjoys 'emotional' day as he drives in Indian GP practice

The HRT driver is making his return to racing this weekend as he replaces Tonio Liuzzi for the inaugural Indian Grand Prix.

Although he was slower in the second practice session, Karthikeyan admitted it had been a special day for him.

"The first lap was very special; I felt so many emotions driving in India," said Karthikeyan. "I just couldn't believe it and there were so many things running through my head. In the first practice we were just trying to get into the swing of things and the second one went much better and we have a lot of things to try for tomorrow.

"Overall it was a good session for me, considering I haven't driven a full race distance since July, so the body needs to wake up a bit.

"The track evolved a lot and so times were improving too. We have a few things to try ahead of tomorrow so I'm quite excited to see how qualifying goes."

Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was 23rd quickest, the Australian rookie admitting he felt more comfortable in the morning session.

"It was our first day here and I can say that it is quite a fun circuit, I'm happy with the layout and I think that most drivers will enjoy it," he said. "This morning the track was cleaning all the time so we just did as many laps as we could which is the most important thing.

"This afternoon we started to work a bit with both compounds. I'm not as happy as in the morning since we made some changes which didn't work as well as we thought they could do. We'll analyse that and work on it for tomorrow. I think we can compete with our main competitors here and give them a good run for their money."