Nurbugring, July 23 (IANS) India's Karun Chandhok, returning to racing after nearly a year, finished 21st in his Team Lotus car in the qualifying session of the Formula One German Grand Prix, here on Saturday.

The 27-year old Chandhok replaced Jarno Trulli who gave up his seat for this weekend's race. Team-mate Heikki Kovalainen qualified 19th for Sunday's race.

In a statement, Chandhok said: "I'm pleased with how qualifying went today. (Team Principal) Tony (Fernandes) had said to me that if I could get within a second of Heikki, he'd be proud, and I finished about 0.8 off him, so that's a goal achieved.

"One of the challenges today has been finding out how much grip there is on the soft tyres on low fuel and that was always going to be a pretty steep learning curve in the qualifiers, but my times have been coming down all weekend, so I'm getting there.

"As I've been saying, the last couple of days have been about learning the car, the tyres and how to get the best out of the DRS system, so to get as close as I reasonably could expect to my teammate is pretty good progress."