Sarath Kumar of WTR Ten10 Racing Aprilia, India's first grand prix world championship rider failed to qualify for the opening round of 2011 world championships held in Losail, Qatar.

The Chennal lad who on his very first international outing did well to improve his lap time in the last 3 free practice sessions. Though he improved and studied the new circuit step by step, it was not enough for him to qualify for the opening round of the 2011 season. He missed the qualifying by 0.6 sec and just missed the cut off for the 107% qualifying rule from the pole sitter.

On the last minute Sarath was inside the 107% time until Nico Terol made a blistering last lap to go even faster pole time which relegated Sarath out of the 107% qualification rule. Sarath tried to cut few more seconds in his last lap but a track side accident prevented him from setting his fastest lap.

As a result Sarath will not be allowed to race on Sunday. His team mate Italian Francesco Mauriello just managed to fit in the last slot on the grid for tomorrow's race.

WTR-Ten 10 Racing official Face Book page quoted the following.

Francesco Mauriello (2'14.994 ), 30th position: "It's been a positive day because we did whatever we could and in the end, we made it to qualify on the last lap. It doesn' matter is we are at the bottom, after all tomorrow is a brand new day. It's been a pity though, because in the warm up I clocked a better time. We still have some problems to the cycling on which working on to be fixed during the warm up. I'm satisfied because I'm qualified, but there's still a lot of work to do on the bike".

Sarath Kumar (2'15.620), not qualified: "I tried to do my best. For me it's not so easy yet, even though practice by practice I proved to keep improving more and more. Unfortunately it wasn' enough because I didn' make it to be qualified. I feel very sad as it was supposed to be my first race. If I didn' crash on the last lap I'd have clocked my best time as I was pushing hard. But it didn' go this way, for only one split second. In Jerez I'll try to do much better".