“I feel like myself again” - Maini reflects on emotional road back to F2 victory in Barcelona

Credit: Formula 2 via X

“You guys have revived me. I feel like myself again.”

Those were the words of ART’s Kush Maini, who crossed the line after a dominant 7.2-second gap to the rest of the field to take his first F2 victory of the 2026 season in Barcelona. The Indian driver never looked back after a rocket start saw him eclipse Noel León off the front row of the grid for the lead. 

It was an assured drive, one of a driver who understands the championship well. Perhaps it was fitting of Maini’s stature as the most experienced driver on the current F2 grid. The Indian knows what it’s like to be quick. Undoubtedly quick over a single lap, and maintaining his own over a race distance to pick up points. 

However, the joys of winning have trickled down for the 25-year-old, who has only tasted victory thrice in his last three seasons in the championship. A total of eight podium appearances spread from 89 race starts paints a picture of a driver struggling to find rhythm. 

For a driver, doing multiple seasons of F2 with little to cheer about can play deeply on their minds. Long nights, days of leaving a racetrack with more questions than answers, the self-doubt that begins to creep in. 

The outside voices start to grow louder, with drivers being judged by the number of seasons under their belt. The years of F2 can often weigh down as a burden rather than an advantage.

It’s something Maini has voiced openly before, celebrating the highs of his qualifying sessions and the occasional test sessions in Alpine’s Formula 1 cars. “F2 can be very strange,” Maini had said, speaking to DIVEBOMB in a media interaction ahead of the season. 

“Honestly, I was very confused over the year,” he said, reflecting on the past season with DAMS, after scoring 32 points and placing 16th in the order.  

During the 2025 season, Maini managed only one podium finish, courtesy of a lights-to-flag drive on Monaco’s tight and twisty streets. On that day, what should have been a victory and a major turning point ended up being a false dawn, a one-off moment in the sun. 

“It's been a real struggle mentally,” the Indian would respond, speaking after qualifying third in Monza last year. “I just haven't been qualifying like this for the last few races, so I didn't know what was happening.”    

Wins have come few and far for Maini in F2 | Credit: Formula 2 via X

For a driver whose primary strengths lie over one qualifying lap, that is an incredibly crushing statement to make. Maini had only qualified in the top 10 on four weekends in 2025, a statistic he has already matched early into the 2026 season with ART. 

In a championship where qualifying makes a massive difference, this poor run of form often impacted Maini’s race strategies, leading to a race start on the harder compound of tyres. It’s a riskier strategy, with no back-up plans in the event of an early safety car intervention. It often saw him finish outside the points, adding to the ‘confused’ nature of his race weekends. 

A major silver lining from such weekends has been the learning, and the ability to gather your thoughts and build maturity as a racer to outlast the bad phase of form. “It's just about learning what you can from those and pushing forward,” Maini would say, reflecting on 2025’s form ahead of his new season.   

There may have been plenty of questions in the air when Maini ventured over to ART, a team who were themselves searching for a big season. A team searching for a way to return to their title-winning form from 2023, when Theo Pourchaire took the title, and Victor Martins won the Anthoine Hubert award for Rookie of the Year. 

Perhaps it was this synergy of a common hunger to get back to form, a shared mutual goal, one that has rejuvenated both Maini and ART in this series of results. “We're both pushing very hard on and off the track.” 

“I found a comfortable environment in ART, and I think they've given me a great platform to sort of build my confidence again,” Maini would acknowledge once again on Saturday, praising the team for their tireless efforts. 

Hard work has indeed been the theme of ART’s return to the top step of the podium. Maini had completed the most laps of any driver during pre-season testing at the same Barcelona venue in February, with 243 laps. “I know from the testing here we had really good pace and I wanted to just redo that,” a confident Maini said, after the Saturday sprint in Barcelona.  

ART have had plenty of time to build on this data and find the right set-up to do well at this venue. 

A major positive has been their ability to unlock Maini’s qualifying strengths once again. It’s why Maini has repeatedly praised the team’s ability to find answers when things go south, as it did in Melbourne. Or utilise their free practice sessions effectively to deliver a strong package for the race weekend. 

Over the course of the 2026 season, the Indian’s results on Fridays read as follows: Seventh, First, 13th, sixth and ninth - evidence of driver and team being in sync in high-pressure situations. 

Maini’s ability to “figure it out as you go” may have rubbed off on ART’s approach too, having attempted audacious strategies of staying late in the race in the hope of a safety car. Despite the inherent risks, it has also proven effective, with a final lap pit stop in Monaco almost bringing home a podium. 

However, through all the strategy calls, the sprint race in Barcelona perhaps presented a golden opportunity for Maini and ART to showcase their pace. Starting second on the reversed grid for the sprint came in handy. No driver had won the Saturday sprint in the venue from pole, with Maini being one of the unlucky names back in 2024 for Invicta. 

The long run down to Barcelona’s Turn 1 is often the most crucial for the race, with overtaking more difficult around this traditional venue. A lot would depend on the start of the race. “You can easily plan, but it’s F2. So we’ll see after I drop the clutch,” Maini would say when asked about his chances of winning the sprint. 

And drop the clutch he did. Maini immediately shot into the lead in the first 100 metres of the race. One he would not relinquish once he hit the apex of Turn 1. By Lap 5, this gap to second-placed Nikola Tsolov had grown to 3.5 seconds. “I wanted to break the DRS for sure, I think, but also I wanted to just drive my own race,” Maini would reiterate. 

While drivers behind were scrapping away constantly, the Indian was unperturbed, maintaining his gap and his lead as the laps ticked by. There was no need to push beyond the limit or do anything out of the ordinary.   

There would be only a brief moment where Maini’s race may have become undone, when the gap slowly dropped down to 3.2 seconds mid-race, as Tsolov looked to close in. However, both drivers would slowly face degradation on their tyres. 

But this allowed for another fascinating insight into F2’s competition between rookies and experienced drivers. As Maini dug deep and eked out the gap once again, the Campos man behind him started to struggle, and would instead fall into the clutches of championship leader Gabriele Minì. 

All that experience and control would eventually see Maini push the gap towards the seven-second mark as the final stages of the race came by. “I feel sharper in the races,” Maini would say when asked by DIVEBOMB about the experience built up over the years. 

All this would eventually play out as Maini delivered an assured victory in Barcelona, crossing the line with a 7.2-second gap to fellow Alpine junior Minì. It was arguably his most complete drive in F2, even if it came in a shorter sprint race, with only 10 points on the line for victory. But more importantly, the psychological impact this result had was much larger than imagined. 

“It's been a very long time since I've enjoyed Formula 2,” Maini said, reiterating the feeling and the joy of winning once again. “It shows what a big difference it makes to actually enjoy what you're doing and fall in love with the sport that I've loved for so long again.” 

The positive sentiment comes with a major stat: Maini’s four-race points streak marks his best run of form since early 2024, in the peak of his form with Invicta Racing. 

Despite a historical tendency to start strong and lose his way as the season progressed, Maini’s assured nature and a comfortable environment in ART may finally see him break this pattern in his F2 career. Among the factors motivating him are national pride and the honour of representing India on the global stage. 

“Nothing's bigger and better than India for me in my heart, and coming from there makes me proud,” Maini says, with a bright smile as he looks to inspire the future generation of racers making their way through the ranks from the tricolour nation.