Shahaan Engineer Finishes 7th in NEC Championship

Fortec Motorsports racer Shahaan Engineer rocketed back into the top 10 of the Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup driver standings at Oschersleben in Germany over the weekend, 7-8 July, after securing ninth, eighth and seventh place finishes in the latest three rounds of the season.

The 16-year-old Indian, who is in only his first full season of car racing and is the youngest driver in the championship, delivered a consistently competitive series of performances throughout the event to surge from 17th in the points table to 10th – just nine points outside the top eight.

Seventh place in the third and final race of the weekend, round eight, on Sunday morning marked Shahaan’s best finish of the 2012 campaign so far. He also confirmed his front-running pace with the sixth-fastest lap of the encounter, a time of 1 minute 28.034 seconds just 0.4 seconds shy of the best of all.

“It’s been a fantastic weekend”, said Shahaan, “I learned a lot of racecraft, improving my result in each race, but most importantly for me I was consistent and finished all three races. I’ve gained some good track time this weekend at Oschersleben which is what I need as I haven’t had much testing in Europe compared to the others as I’ve been studying hard for my GCSEs and have only just finished them.”

Starting the weekend well in practice, where he posted the sixth fastest time in the second of the two sessions, Shahaan continued his front-running consistency in qualifying where he set a best of 1 minute 28.505 seconds (150.33 kmph) to take eighth on the grid for round six. In the second run, he set a fastest lap of 1 minute 27.676 seconds (151.75 kmph) to secure 10th on the grid for round seven.

Reflecting on Shahaan’s Oschersleben weekend, Fortec driver coach Matt Howson said: “Being the youngest in a field of much more experienced drivers, Shahaan needs as many racing miles as he can get and needs to keep improving as much as possible. He’s done a good job, this weekend was a great learning curve for him.”