Starting 11th on the grid, Armaan had no gremlins at the start this time. After a blinding start, Armaan made 5 places in the 1st lap. Towards the end of lap 1, as soon as Armaan passed the chicane, there was a huge crash when Texiera misjudged his braking point and collided into the car in front of him. That sent Texiera’s car spiraling into the air at least 15 feet and the car did a barrel roll and landed on 4 wheels taking out Bailley who was just ahead of the crash. This brought out the safety car for around 8 laps.
On resumption Armaan and Palmer had a good dice for a few laps till Palmer made contact with Armaan from behind. Both controlled their cars well and Armaan came off better though he lost around 3 seconds in that corner which allowed those in front to pull away. With 3 laps to go, Jokinen hit the wall and this pushed Armaan into 5th place. At this point of time, Palmer straight lined the chicane and moved ahead of Armaan, which brought the stewards into play. The stewards however gave a warning and did not reinstate Armaan into 5th place.
Ajit showed some good improvement in the 2nd qualifying and In the 2nd race he had a very good run and was unfortunate to catch the dirt on the 2nd last lap which spun his car round. He was classified in 13th place out of the 14 cars that finished.
Commented Armaan : It was a good start and after moving up to 6th before the crash, I was quite confident of making a few more places at the restart of the race. However, after the contact with Palmer when he hit me from behind, the car was not as balanced as it was in the start of the race and I also lost a lot of time recovering from the bang from behind which allowed those in front to open up the gap a lot. I messed up the boost also as at the end of the race I still had a few shots left and had I used it on a full lap, the lap times would have been far quicker. But all in all, I have had a good weekend by finishing 6th in both places and picking up 16 points. I need to work hard on my qualifying in Monza and if I can put the car in the top 5 in qualifying, I should be able to nail a few podiums.
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