Armaan Ebrahim endured a tough weekend, as mechanical issues forced the young Indian driver to retire from round four of the FIA GT World Series at the Slovakia Ring circuit, here.
The team found during the first free practice session that exhaust was broken near the engine mounting, which meant that engine had to be removed in order to replace the exhaust system. It forced the team to sit out of the second and final practice session before qualifying.
Armaan went into qualifying with just seven laps of track time from the first practice session and to make matters worse, Armaan encountered yellow flags on his fastest qualifying lap, which cost him three-tenths of a second - a significant loss considering the extremely close grid.
Armaan started race one from 17th on the grid and managed to make up a few places on the opening laps, and was running 14th when he realised something was amiss. He managed to pull off the circuit safely. The car had suffered a terminal engine failure which would require replacing the engine.
The team tried to replace the entire powertrain during the three-hour gap between the qualifying and the main race, but could not fire the car up in time.
"We were hoping to pick up from where we left off, but unfortunately it wasn't to be. It was a bad weekend, that's how it is sometimes," said Armaan.
"Everyone worked extremely hard, today and last night so it is really disappointing for it to end this way," he concluded.
