PODIUM FOR RAJ BHARATH AT SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT

· Difficult start to the weekend with changing track and weather conditions.
· Finished second in second race of the weekend after starting fourth.

May 25, Shanghai (China): 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.

“Even though the chassis is same as last year, the car feels completely different right now”, said Raj, comparing his last year’s outing at the same venue where he scored his first international victory.

“The new tyres and engine package makes it a new car altogether, so we spent a lot of time chasing a good setup in the practice sessions. We knew that low–downforce was the way to go, even though it makes the car slightly more on the limit”, he elaborated.

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.

“It was quite weird out there. It felt like the track was changing every few minutes – sometimes we would just come in and go out, without changing anything on the car and it would behave differently.

“I’m not sure what the issue was, but it wasn’t just weather where we had a drizzle one day and hot sun the other. There are a lot of other types of race cars running on the weekend as well so I think the track kept getting rubbered in and out continuously with all different compounds and as a result there was a lot of dirty rubber on the track.”, he explained.

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.

“Second race gave us confidence as the low–downforce approach finally paid off”, said Raj

“Rain is expected for tomorrow’s race so anything can happen, but I’m hoping for another podium which would help me stay in the top–three in the championship. Scoring consistent points is what we need but we’ll hopefully be able to seal that win soon”, he concluded.