Indian racecar driver Arjun Maini has finished fifth quickest overall at the second and final pre-season testing of the 2021 Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) series, which took place at the 4.5km long Lausitzring racetrack in Germany from May 4-6.
The first day of testing began with a downpour, which slowed down pace. The afternoon saw the track drying out and the drivers racked up laps quickly. With a time of 1m 44.408s, Arjun stood in fifth place on the first day.
The second day saw extensive testing, with drivers putting in the most amount of laps. Arjun's team GetSpeed gathered a lot of data and he stood in seventh place clocking in a time of 1m 43.816s. The third day came as a surprise for everyone as in the morning session Arjun came out on top with a time of 1m 43.228s.
“We have a good learning curve, my team GetSpeed is adapting our Mercedes-AMG to my driving style more and more, that is really helpful for me. We are focussing on our own programme. Where we really are, we will find out during the season opener at Monza,.” said Arjun. Ending the day with a time of 1m43.118s, just one hundredths of a second behind fourth place, Arjun has finished fifth overall. Over the course of the three days he has shown significant improvement.
The testing was dominated by Maximilian Götz who also came out on top in the ranking of the completed laps, with 236 laps. Arjun followed in second place with 218 laps. The total number of laps clocked by all drivers is 2915, a distance of 13,321.55km.
Arjun has competed in Formula 2 and even served as Haas F1 team’s development driver in the past. He switched to sportscar racing in 2019, competing in the full season of the 2019 European Le Mans Series. 2020 saw him competing in the Asian Le Mans series for Racing Team India, along with Narain Karthikeyan and Naveen Rao, where they completed the season in fifth place and secured provisional entry for the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans later this year. Arjun announced his DTM entry back in March and is the first Indian to race in the series since its inception in 1984. He has joined hands with Mercedes-AMG affiliated team GetSpeed Performance and will be piloting the No. #36 Mercedes AMG GT3 sporting colors of the Indian tricolour, in the full eight rounds (16 races) of the series.
The 2021 season marks the introduction of GT3 cars to DTM, for which they have been heavily revised and produce a total output of 600bhp. The 2021 DTM season will begin at Monza on June 18. The series will be held across Europe on racetracks like the Nürburgring, Assen, Hockenheimring among others, till October 2021.