Sandeep Kumar put up an impressive show at Norisring, Germany as Scirocco R-Cup 2013 moved into 4th race of the 2013 season. Moving up the order, the young Indian driver managed to clinch his first top-10 finish in the Junior Category. South African driver Kelvin van der Linde continued to be on top with his third victory of the season while Michelle Gatting (Denmark) took the second place, fourth time in four races. Junior Category driver Manuel Fahnauer (Germany), who started fifth on the grid, took his first podium finish (3rd) of the season.
Scirocco R-Cup 2013 moved to Norisring, Germany for the 4th race in the 3rd round of this season. At this historic street circuit, Sandeep Kumar, India’s Polo R Cup 2012 Pro Category winner, continued to show his determination to improve his performance. While he managed to be 15th fastest in the practice session, he went up the order rapidly in qualifying session to finish 10thoverall. With a fastest lap time of 1:00.429 minutes, Sandeep was only 0.379 seconds off the pace. He started off the race steadily holding on to his 10th spot for the first five laps before dropping down to 8th. He moved up into the 7th spot on
lap 12, which he could hold on to till lap 15. Owing to an incident on track, the safety car was brought in which closed up the grid, putting Sandeep under pressure from Jordan Lee Pepper (South Africa) and Dennis Trebing (USA). While racing bumper-to-bumper, the Indian driver was forced off track slightly but managed to escape after scraping against the wall without any major damage. However, he lost his wheel alignment in this incident, which forced him to fall almost a position every lap and had to finally settle for 14th overall and 9thin the Junior Category.
Sandeep said, “I’m satisfied with my performance over the weekend. I was impressed with my time in the qualifying round and having scored 4th fastest lap time amongst the Junior Category drivers is very encouraging for me. I’m very positive about the next race as I get to apply what I have learned in this round.”
Scirocco R-Cup 2013 will now move to the iconic Nürburgring circuit for Race 5 and 6 of the season on 17th and 18thAugust 2013.