BENGALURU: 17-year-old Arjun Maini made waves at the Teretonga race track in the Toyota Racing Series in New Zealand on Saturday when he won Race 1 of Round 2, around the extremely fast circuit with a time of 16 minutes, 57.316 seconds with a fastest lap of 53.156 seconds.
Arjun, who is supported by JK Tyre and Kirloskar Electric, started third on the grid and an incident on the first corner which brought out the red flag. After restart, Arjun got off to a brilliant start and got a slipstream on Brandon Maisano of France and passed him on the outside of the main straight and shot off into the lead. He quickly managed to pull out a one second advantage, but another incident at the first corner brought out the safety car for the second time.
Arjun got off to a brilliant start and built a strong lead by posting some fast laps and building a gap of 1.15 seconds on Brandon Maisano. Lance Stroll from the Ferrari Driver academy finished third. This was also a remarkable result for Arjun’s team M2 racing as they managed to book all podium places with their drivers finishing first, second and third.
Unfortunately after all the celebrations, there was a surprise penalty awarded to Arjun and Maisano for supposedly not following the restart procedure under the safety car correctly. Even though everybody commented that both the restarts were some of the safest and the best they had seen, the authorities went ahead with the penalty. Though the protest was lodged, the 10 second penalty ultimately put Arjun 9th in the race.
Earlier, in the day the qualifying sessions did not go according to plan, as Arjun had a failure on the car’s rear wing, which made the car very difficult to drive. The qualifying session was closely contested with 1st to 19th positions separated by little more than a second. Arjun, started Race 2 which was on Sunday, 9th on the grid (finishing position from the first race) and started Race 3 on Sunday from 5th which is the time from the second qualifying. Arjun finished 7th and 4th respectively and made up places which was very difficult given the tight nature of the track. Arjun continues to be second in the Championship with 311 points.