Kush Maini, who is part of the Alpine Academy and racing for Invicta (Car no. 9) put up an impressive show to finish on the Podium in P2 in the 28 Laps Feature race in Formula 2 at Jeddah which took place before the F1 GP late on Saturday.
Starting in Pole Position, Kush got off to a brilliant start and opened up the gap. However, an incident on Lap 1 brought out the safety car from Lap 2 which closed the pack. On the restart after a few laps, Kush once again made a brilliant restart on his Supersoft tires to ensure that Jack Crawford was out of his DRS range.
After an early mandatory pitstop, he found himself 3 Seconds ahead of Enzo Fittipaldi in a net Second Position. However, many cars had not yet made a stop.
Fittipaldi had extremely good pace and was able to pass Kush. After the next Safety car, Kush found himself in 4th Position behind Correa and Cordeel with eight Laps to go.
Cordeel was on the defensive with Correa passing him into the first corner but as the pair squabbled on a corner exit, Maini was able to clear the Belgian to improve to third on the road.
Correa finally made his stop on Lap 26 to leave Maini, Cordeel, Crawford, Antonelli, and Hauger to scrap for the podium places.
Onto the final lap and Maini led a DRS train down to fifth and kept P2 for Invicta but a three-car-wide drag race for the final podium position went the way of Hauger, who finished just 0.031s ahead of Crawford in fourth, and Cordeel, who dropped to fifth by 0.127s.
Kush Maini: “I think it was a positive race, especially after yesterday where we really struggled, so I am really happy the team and I switched it around. Today we were really competitive. Obviously, Enzo was in a different league today so congratulations to him. I think I am happy with P2. We need to analyse a little bit more on where we can catch Enzo, but good points today.
I think Qualifying-wise we knew that we would be on the money. The car is great. We had a few doubts in the races but now that that is cleared up, I feel we can be competitive all throughout and I am looking forward to Melbourne. The first lap on the second set, I don’t feel like I maximised it. The second lap I feel like I did but I just ran out of tires at the end. I think Ollie did a great lap. I feel I could have challenged a bit harder if I had put it together in that first lap.
I believe the team and I are working really well. It’s a great atmosphere with the team, good banter and we have fun through the weekend as well which is very important. It’s a good relationship with my teammate as well. We are constantly pushing each other. I think it’s too early to say but I am happy with the progress we are making.
I would like to thank Alpine Academy, Invicta, JK Racing, TVS Racing, my Manager Guillaume, Performance Coach Warren from Hintsa, and last but not least my Mentor and 2-time F1 World Champion Mika Hakkinen. I believe we have created a strong team to support me.”
FIA Formula 2 will move to Melbourne from 22nd - 24th March. Live action can be seen on F1 TV as well as Fan Code in India.