Maini and Raghunathan's Portimao qualifying round-up
Van Amersfoort Racing's Arjun Maini and Motopark's Mahaveer Raghunathan are in action this weekend for the ninth round of the FIA European Championship at Portimao.
Photo by: FIA F3 / Suer
Heading into the weekend, Maini and Raghunathan sit 10th and 18th in the rookie championship while Maini is 18th in the main championship.
After two-day of testing at the same venue, the weekend kickstarted with two practice session on Friday morning where Maini finished 20th and 11th respectively.
Raghunathan, on the other hand, was 29th and 30th in the two sessions which were headed by Carlin's Callum Ilott and Prema's Jake Dennis respectively.
It was yet again a close contest among the 33 drivers as both the sessions saw the top 23 drivers within a second of each other.
Qualifying
Friday afternoon saw the two qualifying sessions for the three races to take place on Saturday and Sunday.
The first qualifying had Dennis along with returning Nick Cassidy and Ferrari protege Lance Stroll completing a Prema 1-2-3 for the first race of the weekend.
Maini finished 17th and was only 0.636s off Dennis' pole time which saw the top 25 drivers finishing within a second of Dennis. Raghunathan, meanwhile, qualified 32nd.
In the second qualifying session, Alexander Albon (Signature) took pole ahead of Prema's Felix Rosenqvist and Cassidy. Once again the session saw the top 26 drivers within a second of each other in a closely fought qualifying.
Maini will start 19th in the second race; the Indian was 0.697s off Albon's pole time while Raghunathan finished 32nd again.
For the third race, taking the second best time of the session saw Rosenqvist on pole with Stroll and Dennis completing Prema 1-2-3.
Maini improved to finish 17th while Raghunathan remained 32nd.
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