Podium position for Raj Bharath at Shanghai International Circuit
After completing a solid debut weekend at Zhuhai, Indian youngster Raj Bharath continued his charge in the Formula Masters championship as he clinched second place at round two of the series at Shanghai International Circuit.
- NDTVSports
- Updated: May 26, 2013 08:11 AM IST
After completing a solid debut weekend at Zhuhai, Indian youngster Raj Bharath continued his charge in the Formula Masters championship as he clinched second place at round two of the series at Shanghai International Circuit.
Backed by Bangalore-based real estate developer Embassy Group and driving for Meco Motorsport, Raj had qualified fourth on the grid and finished race one in the same position before following it up with a second place in race two.
The weekend had started on a difficult note the team worked to find the right setup to suit the 4.6-kilometre layout.
The venue, which also hosts the F1 Chinese Grand Prix is a unique challenge on the setup front, as sectors 1 and 2 consist of high-speed corners, while sector 3 has long straights - the longest being over 1.1-kilometre long.
This makes the setup choice difficult since balance between drag and downforce become critical. High downforce offers an advantage in the first two sectors with high cornering speeds, but due to excess drag, top speed will suffer.
A low-downforce setup will make the car twitchy and difficult to drive in the first two sectors, but will benefit top-speed in a straight line so getting the balance right was crucial for a good lap time.
Although Raj was able to muscle his way to the sharp-end of the grid in qualifying, he was unable to get close to pole position - a feat that he had achieved in Zhuhai two weeks back. As a result he had to settle for fourth on the grid but there were other contributing factors as well.
Race one turned out to be uneventful as Raj tried his best to gain positions from the second row but after losing out in the opening sectors, he was unable to claw back the difference through the long straights of the final sector.
After a brief dice with Akash Nandy who went on to finish third, Raj decided to focus on lap times which would enable him to study how he could get himself in a better position for race two.
"We made some small setup changes before race two but we stuck to the low-downforce philosophy while everyone else went with high-downforce for cornering advantage", he revealed.
As lights went out for race two, Raj immediately managed to jump Akash Nandy to slot himself in third at the start, while his front-running rivals Aidan Wright and Afiq Yazid got away.
Slowly though, he began to haul in Aidan, who was running second and managed to get a good slipstream on the back straight before diving down the inside at the hairpin to relieve the Australian of second place.
After that Raj didn't look back and put his head down to chase Afiq for the top spot, but it wasn't to be as he fell short by two seconds at the finish line.