Gremlins plague Chandhok at Oulton.

India's Formula 3 ace Karun Chandhok's season of bad luck continued at the picturesque Oulton Park circuit when he was forced to retire from both races with mechanical failures. The T-Sport team driver once again showed good speed through the weekend and was very disappointed with the result.

The practice sessions on Friday were a mixed bag with rain interrupting the session after the first 20 minutes making it difficult for the drivers to acclimatize to the circuit. Little did the teams know that this would be a preview for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday's first qualifying session was one of the most dramatic in recent times. The session started in the rain but the track gradually dried towards the dying minutes which meant that the drivers who were the last to come across the line who have the best track conditions.

Chandhok once again showed his improved wet weather form and was running amongst the top three all throughout the session. But in the dying minutes as the track dried and laptimes were getting faster, Karun was one of the first to take the chequered flag which meant that there were still several drivers after him who had better track conditions dropping him down to eighth.

The second session was a similar trend - a damp track to start with but drying at the end. Karun posted a fantastic lap of 1m 33.3secs with just one minute of the session to spare moving him to second place but on his last lap, the Malaysian driver Fairuz Fauzy spun in front of him which resulted in others making use of the better conditions sending the unfortunate Indian down to 11th within the space of a minute.

The first race on Sunday in front of an enormous crowd started off well for Karun when he passed Will Power at the start and was running in seventh place. But on lap two, Power made a lunge to pass Karun sending the Indian wide onto the grass. On the very next lap though, Karun was forced to retire with a fuel pump failure.

Race 2 was over even before it started for the Indian. As the team went to start the engine a problem was noticed with the main crank shaft of the engine. With not enough time to change the engine, Chandhok was unable even to make it to the start.

Team owner Russell Eacott gave his version of this weekend's events, "I really don't know what we have to do to have a clean weekend. Karun is the most unlucky driver in the pitlane at the moment - if there is a collision or a mechanical problem this year it always seems to be happening to us. Once again we had the genuine potential to run at the front and once again things haven't fallen into place. I still think that we can fulfill our aim of winning a race or two by the end of the season, but we just need to stop having all these small but costly problems."

The 20 year old from Madras gave his version. "It's tremendously frustrating for me right now. I know that we have the speed and the people up and down the pitlane know it but it's difficult to explain to people back home how every time we get a sniff of a chance of running at the front something happens to take that away from us. The important thing is to not get disheartened right now and just work hard for the remaining races and hope that we can show our potential in terms of results."