27 May 2018, Monaco: On his debut run at the beautiful Monte Carlo track, Arjun masterfully carved himself two P5 finishes in the feature and sprint race on Friday and Saturday respectively. This meant he also matched his best finish in the Formula 2 Championship from Baku. He scored 16 points this weekend alone to take his final points tally to 22 points.
Round 4 of the FIA F2 Championship began with Arjun finishing P12 in the practice session on Thursday. In group B for qualifying, he completed his group in fourth place. With a time of 1:22.263s, he qualified in P8 overall, and was set to start on the 4th row of the grid. After certain post-session penalties, Arjun started the feature race from P7.
Supported by JK Racing and TVS Motorsport, Arjun started the race by comfortably gaining a few places in the first few laps itself. He followed this up with a series of fastest lap times and was in P2 for a large part of the race, he then lost out on the opportunity for a podium finish due to an unfortunately timed safety car period and managed to eventually fend off Norris to earn himself the P5 spot. The sprint race however was a more thrilling race with Arjun losing a position early but fighting back to hold onto P4, he eventually finished the race in P6 with Merhi illegally overtaking him during a safety car with one lap to go. After Merhi’s 5-second penalty was announced post-race, Arjun was pushed up to P5 again, a strong end to his weekend.
Talking about his first time here at Monaco, Arjun Maini said, “It feels great to have managed two top 5 finishes on my first visit to Monaco. I haven’t had the best of luck this season and hopefully both the team and I can build on this result. Id also like to thank my sponsors JK Racing and TVS Motorsport for their continued support and hopefully my first podium in the series is not too far away.”
The next round of the championship will be at the Paul Ricard circuit, France in just under a month's time scheduled for the June 22-24 weekend.