Armaan finishes 12th after shunt

Birmingham (Alamaba), April 2 (IANS) India's Armaan Ebrahim of Fan Force United team finished the second round of the Indy Lights series in 12th position after suffering a first corner shunt at the Barber Race Track here Sunday.

Staring 12th on the grid, the 22-year old Armaan had a good start once the lights went green. Being a rolling start, the speeds were quite high going into Corner 1 which is a fast left hander. Entering the corner, Armaan got hit from behind and this sent his car spiralling into the gravel trap.

Armaan managed to recover the car and rejoin the race immediately and then had to fight his way back up the order and had moved up to 10th place before his front tyre started to grain badly due to the slightly damaged front wing.

Armaan had to pit on Lap 27 to change the front tyre and thus lost a lot of time and track positions. While exiting the pit lane, the course went to a full yellow with the safety car out for a few laps.

This allowed Armaan to catch up with pack and when the race restarted, he put in some blistering laps and managed to pass quite a few cars to finish 12th.

Armaan said: 'It is a slow process playing catch up due to lack of testing. However, the gap is getting closer and I am pretty confident that the next race at Long Beach Island, California, will see me much closer to the top 5.

'It takes quite a bit getting used to this car as one can see in the way that (Rubens) Barrichello is also struggling for lack of track time. The last stint after the tyre change was good as we passed quite a few cars and I am lucky to be able to finish and collect more points.'