Daruvala Makes It To The Podium, Shock Manufacturer Withdrawal In Indian Rallying, Chaos In F1 Bahrain And More

F2 

Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala had his best race weekend of his 2020 FIA Formula 2 season in Bahrain by scoring 3rd and his maiden podium in the feature race after qualifying 8th. It was a very hard fought podium though, as the Indian driver had a close fight with Mick Schumacher. It was looking like another consecutive podium for Daruvala in the sprint race, unfortunately he was punted out of the race by Callum Illot.  

That said, there’s still  a chance for Daruvala to continue his good run of form when F2 returns to Bahrain for the season finale. The difference being that F2 will utilise the shorter layout which is completely unknown to the drivers.  

Indian motorsport

 

This week saw the 2020 MRF MMSC FMSCI Indian National Car Racing Championship season come to a close at the MMRT in Chennai. At the end of it all, Arjun Balu from Race Concepts clinched the driver’s title after a win in Race 1, a second place finish in Race 2 and a DNF in Race 3.  In the team’s championship though, it was FB Motorsport that took top honors aided by Dhruv Mohite taking wins in Race 2 and Race 3.

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Off-track, though, there were some big revelations as Mahindra Adventure pulled out of the 2020 Indian National Rally Championship season. This leaves the INRC grid with no manufacturer team after 7 years with barely two weeks to go before the five round season kicks off  from December 16 at Itanagar. There is a silver lining as  Mahindra will be providing Gaurav Gill and Amitrajit Ghosh the R2-spec XUV300 with Arka Motorsports . The difference being, Gill will be running  JK tyres, whereas Ghosh will run MRF tyres.

F1 

The first of Formula One’s final triple headers of the 2020 season saw Lewis Hamilton take victory for Mercedes in a chaotic Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of the Red Bull Honda duo of Max Verstappen and Alex Albon. The race started off on a scary note as a first lap incident saw Haas’s Romain Grosjean walk away with minor burns to his hands in a nightmare crash where the car burst into flames in seconds. While the race at the top was more of a stalemate, there was drama in the fight for 3rd as Racing Point’s Sergio Perez had a  power unit failure with just three laps to go, essentially giving the final podium spot to Alex Albon. 

With Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas suffering another forgettable finish to 8th, the battle for 2nd overall in the drivers championship is wide open with Max Verstappen only 12 points behind and only two rounds to go. In other news Haas has revealed that their reserve driver Pietro Fittipaldi will stand in for Romain Grosjean for the Sakhir Grand Prix next weekend.

Formula E

The last seven days saw pre-season testing kick off for Season 7 of the 2020/21 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship at Valencia. The opening day saw Andre Lotterer take top honors ahead of the DS TeCheetah duo of Jean Eric Verge and Antonio Felix Da Costa with the top 15 covered by a second. The second day saw Mahindra Racing’s new signing Alex Lynn top proceedings ahead of the BMW Andretti duo of Maximilian Gunther and Jack Dennis, with the top 16 covered by just eight tenths of a second. There’s another day of testing on December 1 before we head to Santiago for the season opening double header that starts from January 16. Also Mahindra Racing is the first manufacturer to commit to participating in the Gen3 era of Formula E that will start from the  2022/23 season.

Aside from this, Audi recently dropped a bombshell that it will pull out of Formula E as a factory team at the end of this season. That said the carmaker will continue to provide powertrains to its customers.

WEC

With Audi announcing that it is exiting Formula E, the carmaker has immediately revealed that it is preparing for a return to the FIA World Endurance Championship with a new LMDh programme. The carmaker has yet to reveal which season it’ll participate in, but it will go up against the likes of Toyota and Peugeot.

Dakar

Audi also announced that it will be competing in the Dakar 2022 for the first time with a prototype of their own. The prototype will feature an electric drivetrain with a high-voltage battery.