Arjun Maini’s manager Karun Chandhok believes that the Haas Formula 1 development driver needs to improve his qualifying form during 2018.
Maini – who competed for Trident and Russian Time in F2 testing last December and set the fastest time in two sessions for the latter – is working on a move into the series for 2018.
The Indian was outqualified by Alessio Lorandi at Jenzer three times in the opening four weekends of GP3 action last season, before bettering the Italian and newcomer Juan Manuel Correa three times at the end of the campaign.
Maini started the Barcelona feature race in sixth, prior to going on to better his personal best by heading the second row at Spa.
“There are certain circuits where his qualifying performances weren’t great,” he told Read Motorsport at the Autosport International show at Birmingham’s NEC, as Maini qualified outside the top 10 on three occasions, starting features 12th at Austria, 13th at Hungary and 19th at Jerez.
“That’s something we need to think about going forward.
“In the F2 test, he was actually working with an engineer who I worked with at iSport in 2008 [in GP2], Gavin Jones, a brilliant engineer, one of the best I’ve ever worked with.
“I spoke to him before the test about Arjun’s one-lap pace and I thought it needed an improvement and he said they had focused on that in Abu Dhabi and he delivered under pressure to do it.
“He’s improving.”
Chandhok also summed up Maini’s 2017 as a ‘reasonable year’, taking a ninth-place finish in the drivers’ championship.
The 20-year-old won the sprint race at Barcelona from second on the grid and collected points-scoring positions in 10 of 15 races.
“He had a reasonable year, started off better than we hoped, won a race at the first weekend at Barcelona, but there was a phase in the middle of the year we had a few tough weekends, didn’t really score enough points, so that sort of knocked the wind out of his championship situation,” he added.
“He finished the year quite well, qualified well at the last race in Abu Dhabi and finished on the podium, and then had a very impressive couple of days in the F2 test as a rookie, he did a really good job.
“We have to also keep perspective that he wasn’t with the best team on the grid, ART was unquestionably the best package, and also it helped that they had four drivers who were all very good.
“With GP3, the format, free practice, half an hour of qualifying, you have so little scope for testing and evaluating things.
“If you’ve got four cars with four good drivers to bounce ideas across, the whole team benefits.
“There’s a lot of elements that didn’t help anyone who wasn’t with ART or Trident.
“Jenzer only had two cars for the most part, and that hampered [things] a little bit.”
