New Local Team Rockets to Pole at Formula Renault V6

4 cars entered the 1st corner abreast of each other and Armaan managed to pass all three of them between corner 1 and corner 2, which was the move of the race.

Once in the lead, Armaan pulled out a 6 second lead over 2nd placed Seth Ingram from USA and Earl Bamber from New Zealand. With a comfortable lead, Armaan backed off the pace and held his race lead with a 4 second gap.

[IMG]http://www.oneshift.com/showroom/uploadimages/resized-20070623175127452.jpg[/IMG]

In the meanwhile, Earl Bamber and Seth Ingram had a coming together in the last corner onto the main straight, thus leaving James Winslow from the UK and Marchy Lee from Hong Kong to fight it out for the 2nd & 3rd place.

[IMG]http://www.oneshift.com/showroom/uploadimages/resized-20070623175048992.jpg[/IMG]

With 4 laps to go it started to rain, bringing some nervous moments to Armaan’s pit crew. After having backed off considerably, Armaan opened the gap again in the wet and with just 2 laps to go there was a big crash involving the the 2nd TARA DTM driver Hafiz Koh.

This brought the safety car out for the last lap and Armaan took the chequered flag in style behind the safety car.

March Lee from Hong Kong took advantage of the wet in the last few laps and made a very brave move on James Winslow to take 2nd with James from the UK coming in 3rd.

After being the quickest in all 3 sessions in free practice, Armaan lost his way a bit in qualifying. Armaan qualified 4th. This put a lot of pressure on the young Indian driver, who had nothing but bad luck the previous round after qualifying on pole.

[IMG]http://www.oneshift.com/showroom/uploadimages/resized-20070623174606625.jpg[/IMG]

Commented Armaan, "I basically tried to push too hard in the faster corners and in trying to balance the car for the fast corners we lost our way a bit. The others gained 3.5 secs from practice to qualifying and I was able to gain only 2 seconds. However, I knew I had a good race car and that’s all that mattered."

"It feels good to win after all that happened the last round and I want to thank my team and my sponsors for standing by me and backing me to the hilt. I also want to specially thank Pady, my engineer, Fabien my team manager and my mechanics for working with me through a tough qualifying period."

"I hope to do well in the 2nd race tomorrow and I will be focusing on the start as I start from the front."

Commented Team Manager Fabien Fior, "It was full of mixed emotions with being really quick in testing and then loosing our way in qualifying."

"But Armaan made a fantastic move into the first corner and then ran away with the race. We hope to do well again tomorrow."

Credits: nikolaiski