DTM: Maini has a difficult start to 2022 season in Portimao
Arjun Maini kick-started his 2022 DTM campaign with Haupt Racing Team (HRT) last weekend at Portimao driving the #36b Mercedes-AMG GT3 machine alongside teammate Luca Stolz.
Starting the weekend, Maini finished 22nd and 24th in the two practice sessions, where he was 15th in Qualifying 1 and 22nd in Qualifying 2. It was a difficult qualifying for the Indian which left him in a difficult spot in races.
In Race 1, he dropped places at the start and managed to recover to 17th in the end, while in Race 2, he had a better run to move from outside of Top 20 to finish 13th eventually but out of points.
“Overall, it was a difficult weekend for me,” said Maini. “But we had strong pace, just that not everything came together. In Qualifying 1, we had few issues which didn’t allow me to improve on the second set.
“In Race, once again, the pace was good but I was in a few unlucky positions and I lost a lot of positions on start and re-starts. In Qualifying 2, the car was very good but unfortunately we got blocked on the fastest lap.
“After that we had no tyres, so we had to start Race 2 from the back. Also, we had a penalty from the previous day. We started P25, the car was mega, the guys did a really good job in the pit stops, so we finished P13.
“In the end, that was the best we could do but pace is there, we just need everything to come together now, massive thanks to whole HRT team and Mercedes for giving me a strong car.”
