Spielberg (Austria), June 6 (IANS) Aditya Patel from India came away with a mixed bag of results in the second round of the Volkswagen Scirocco R-Cup touring car series, at the Red Bull Ring here over the weekend.
The 22-year-old Chennai-based Aditya finished fourth in the second race Sunday after missing out on a possible podium position in the first outing the previous day following a drive-through penalty that eventually placed him 11th.
After two rounds, Aditya is fourth in the championship with 66 points while compatriot and debutant Sailesh Bolisetti, who finished 15th and 14th in the two races, has 30 to his credit and is placed 12th.
Thus, he started the second race in the 11th position. His plan for the race was fairly straight forward - to collect as many points as possible without making mistakes.
A good start saw Aditya gain a place into turn one before making another two places by turn three. Now up to eighth place, the youngster waited and watched for three laps while the cars in front used up their Push-to-pass whilst battling against each other.
With six laps to go, Aditya began making his moves, passing fellow competitors corner after corner. With four laps to go he was now comfortably in fourth place and began roping in American driver Dennis Trebbing for third. Unfortunately, time wasn't on Aditya's side and he had to settle for fourth.
"This has to be one of the best races I've ever driven! I knew I had to use the push-to-pass wisely if I had any hope of passing those four cars and my plan worked perfectly.
"I want to thank my engineer and driver coach Ronny and Philip for all their efforts, without which this result would have been hard to achieve," he said.
Saturday, after qualifying third on the grid, the race began in wet conditions. Aditya moved up a position following a contact with Daniel Lloyd and both spun, but the Indian quickly regained his second spot behind race leader Mateusz Lisowski.
However, with about three laps left, Aditya was handed a drive-through penalty for the incident with Lloyd and he eventually finished 11th.