Historic DTM silver for Arjun Maini
Maini becomes first Indian to win a podium place in DTM Series
Nuremberg, 9 October 2021: Ace Indian racing star Arjun Maini of Mercedes-AMG Team GetSpeed won his maiden DTM podium with silver in the Saturday’s race. Thus, he became the first Indian on a DTM podium and accolades poured in for the Indian star, who embraced this form of motorsports at the beginning of the season by becoming the first Indian to take part in DTM series.
Watch the Video here, courtesy DTM.
Watch Arjun Maini’s short interview here, courtesy DTM.
The Omega Seiki and J.K.Tyre backed driver was justly rewarded for the pace he has shown throughout the season with the Indian managing to hold off a strong challenge from championship leader Liam Lawson towards the end of the race.
As expected going into the weekend, Maini was able to make full use of his prior knowledge of the Norisring race circuit from his Formula 3 days. The Indian finished second in Free Practice 2 before qualifying fourth for the weekend’s first race. While the Indian was overtaken by Mercedes stablemate Maximillian Gotz at the start, he managed to keep out of major trouble, despite banging wheels with Lawson and mildly damaging his front right suspension.
It took Arjun many laps to get used to the damage and yet retain a reasonable pace.
A cleanly executed pitstop from the GetSpeed racing team further aided the Indian’s effort, with Maini leapfrogging Lawson and settling in behind Gotz, a position he would go on to maintain for the remainder of the race.
“I’m absolutely delighted with the result,” a clearly jubilant Maini stated.
“We’ve worked so hard throughout the year and while our qualifying pace has been good, we’ve never been able to stitch together a clean race. Today was just one of those days where everything came together, our pace was good and GetSpeed executed a well-judged pitstop.
“We have one more race to go tomorrow so I won’t be celebrating too much, but I have to say it feels good to finally achieve my aim for the season.”
The result also marked GetSpeed’s first podium in the championship, the team made their DTM debut this season with Maini and the pair have performed admirably over the course of the season given their relative lack of experience.
Earlier, in DTM Norisring powered by BWT, the ultimate showdown is imminent on Sunday. With his victory on Saturday, Maximilian Götz has made the three-way battle for the coveted DTM title even more thrilling. With the Mercedes-AMG run by the HRT team, the driver from Uffenheim scored his second win of the season. Points’ leader Liam Lawson secured third place with the Red Bull Ferrari behind Indian Arjun Maini with the GetSpeed Mercedes while Kelvin van der Linde finished fourth with the ABT Audi at the 2.3 kilometres long Norisring.
With this thrilling outcome of the race, Lawson, now leading with a total of 224 points, extended his margin to 18 points over Kelvin van der Linde (206), but Götz (205) reduced his gap to only one point to van der Linde and 19 to Lawson. In total, there are still 28 points up for grabs, three in qualifying and 25 in the deciding race on Sunday. Arjun Maini, who was plagued by mechanical failures and engine issues earlier, is 13th in the standings with 40 points.
The Bengaluru-born Maini, began the week-end on a confident note posting a 49.842 sec in Free Practice on to finish 7th , just 0.256 second off the pace of P1, and put on a good 42 laps with only Esteban Muth putting more laps, and derived good data to set up the car. He did another 43 laps in Free Practice 2 and was the second quickest posting a time of 49.405, missing the top entry on the timesheets by just 0.030sec. He continued the good run improving the time below 49s but could only get a P4 on the start grid for the Saturday race as the top-8 were all in 1/100th of a second. Maini P4 is just 0.007off the pole man as he clocked 48.938. The Indian bagged 18 points to take his tally to a decent 40 points despite all the hiccups with the mechanical issues.
“What an incredible race! It’s a big day for @ArjunMaini, the first Indian on a DTM podium,” tweeted Mercedes AMG official handle with a hashtag #DTM2021″ and tagged Maini. “Thank you guys! The care was mega,” was the Indian star’s reply.
“Yes, we did it. P2. I am so happy to get my first podium in DTM (series) here in Norisring and also the first podium for India,” Maini said after the race and thanked all his supporters, his team Mercedes AMG and GetSpeed,for the car, on the Social Media. `”Raring to go for tomorrow’s race,” he quipped.
The season’s final qualifying session and race can be streamed on AutoCar India’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/autocarindia1) with Qualifying flagging off at 1 pm IST with the race starting at 5 pm IST.
