Weekend round-up (June 22-24): F1, Maini, Daruvala

Lewis Hamilton claimed a lights-to-flag win in the returning French Grand Prix, while chief rival Sebastian Vettel salvaged a fifth place finish after early crash.

Vettel locked up going into turn 1 and hit Valtteri Bottas, causing a puncture on latter’s Mercedes. Vettel himself suffered a broken front wing and was also handed a five-second penalty, but staged a fine recovery drive to finish fifth.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen finished second, while his teammate Daniel Ricciardo, who was carrying damage on his car, was denied a podium spot late in the race by Kimi Raikkonen.

Force India endured a double DNF for the first time in nearly two years; Esteban Ocon was unlucky when he was tagged by the Toro Rosso of Pierre Gasly, while Sergio Perez had to pull into the pits with a drop in water pressure.

Arjun Maini’s Formula 2 weekend at Paul Ricard was blighted by engine issues and he could only score a solitary point in Saturday’s feature race.

This led to a very public outburst over team radio on Sunday and Maini again highlighted issues with F2’s new car in an interview with Motorsport.com.

The 20-year-old, who has scored three top-five finishes so far, was also troubled by engine problems in Azerbaijan earlier this year.

Jehan Daruvala scored a podium finish in the third round of European F3 championship at Norisring in Germany.

Daruvala was slow off the line in Race 1 and dropped from second to fourth, but managed to pass Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum to claim the final spot on the rostrum.

He later finished sixth in Race 2, before rounding off the weekend with fifth.

Akhil Rabindra (GT4 European Series Misano)

Akhil Rabindra finished 36th and 13th in the most recent round of GT4 European Series at Misano, Italy.

Rabindra was driving a BMW M4 GT4 alongside former Le Mans racer Stephane Lemeret for 3Y Technologies.

Ruhaan Alva notched up his first podium finish of 2018 in the fifth round of EasyKart Italian Championship.

Alva was challenging the third-placed karter when two of his rivals suffered technical problems, promoting him to second place.

He was competing in the 100cc class for Birel ART India team.

Ashwin Datta scored a triple win as the new MRF F1600 season, the flagship category of MMSC National Racing Championship, got underway at Coimbatore’s Kari Motor Speedway.

Datta led Race 1 throughout from pole, but had to make his way up the field in the other two races of the weekend.

Nayan Chatterjee, Raghul Rangasamy and Yash Aradhya were among the list of drivers who finished on the podium in one or more races.

Dhruv Mohite replicated Datta’s dominance in the Volkswagen Ameo Cup season opener, winning both races of the Coimbatore round.

While his Race 1 victory was relatively easy as he was able to repass Jeet Jhabakh for the lead early on, he had to climb his way from eighth on the grid in the second race to secure a perfect double.