BENGALURU: A podium at Monza, victory at Paul Ricard and nearly the class title at Barcelona.
Arjun Maini’s second season in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup was a marked improvement from his debut season in 2022. Racing the #79 Mercedes AMG GT3 for Germany’s Haupt Racing Team(HRT), Maini, along with teammates Hubert Haupt and Sebastian Baud, narrowly missed the Bronze Cup title by just 3 points.
“It was a bittersweet experience,” says Maini, as he reflects on a messy season fianle at Barcelona-Catalunya held on Oct 1. Going into the race, Team HRT trailed Sky-Tempesta Racing(STR) by eight points. Winning was essential, while Team STR needed to finish third or lower. Even as Team STR took the early race lead, Maini and his team got a break as one of their other rivals retired from the race. The stakes were high, Team HRT had the race pace and a solid pre-race strategy.
“Barcelona is obviously a demanding track, and hard on the tyres. So the undercut is really effective there. Originally we were planning to initiate a strong undercut during my stint at the end. It seemed like we were in a good position and it would have been an interesting race. But obviously things changed during the race and it was quite a messy race,” Maini adds.
The race took a turn for the worse when a miscommunication led to car #79 diving into the pits earlier than originally planned, during a full course yellow(FCY). “We lost around 25 seconds during that period and it cost us a lot of places,” says the disappointed 25-year-old.
Following a second stint by Baud that saw him recover 2 positions, Maini jumped into the car for the final stint. The final hour of the three-hour-long race saw frequent FCY and safety car interruptions. Nevertheless, Maini’s strong race pace allowed him to recover to P4 in the Bronze class. “Despite the messy race, we managed to get ahead of the Sky car, but in the end it wasn’t enough,” adds Maini.
As a former single seater racer, who was once touted as a future Formula 1 talent, Maini has successfully transitioned to GT and endurance races in recent years, with stints in European Le Mans Series and Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters(DTM). So how does his experience racing in junior Formula translate to sportscars? “The basics are really similar.
At the end of the day, it’s just racing. But the main thing that translates from Formula racing is qualifying, because the approach is quite similar, in terms of putting a clean lap together, getting the tyres warmed up properly. In DTM especially, there are no tyre warmers, similar to F2, so there are a lot of similarities. In races, however, it’s slightly different. GT is much more aggressive, with a lot more contact compared to formula racing,” explains the Bengaluru boy, who has had an impressive 2023 so far.
“My debut at Nordschleife was a highlight. To have such a strong race there, finishing second in class and eighth overall was amazing. It was one of the toughest challenges I’ve ever done. And DTM has been quite tough this year for various reasons. But the World Challenge was decent, even if it was a bit disappointing. A lot of learnings, and a few things that I still need to improve upon,” he concludes.