"We were going to do a track walk. But then someone told me to look out for a cobra at Turn 1, vipers a bit further around, and a group of wild boar. So we didn't do the track walk..."
Warren Hughes is a Chennai old boy - he contested the Madras Grand Prix in the 1990s in its Formula 3 days - and was back at the Irungattukottai track last weekend for the final round of the MRF Challenge. Now his role was as driver coach and engineer to promising Russian Nikita Troitskiy.
Not that Troitskiy would have been on the track walk anyway - visa issues meant he arrived late in India, missing the first test session on Thursday. Still, he did better than Giuliano Alesi, who along with father Jean found out too late that they needed a visa and never made it onto the plane.