Four races, four winners marked the premier MRF Formula 2000 category while Coimbatore ace Arjun Narendran bagged a double in the Indian Touring Cars class as the third and penultimate round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Car Racing Championship 2022 concluded at the Madras International Circuit.
MRF F2000:
While 21-year old Sohil won untroubled from pole position in a six-car grid in race1. For Sohil Shah, it was a lights-to-flag victory. Starting from pole position, he gradually increased his lead that grew to a little over three seconds at the finish. Behind him, Chennai’s Mohamed Ryan and championship leader Sai Sanjay from Salem came in second and third. Arya Singh had to pull out in the free practice, as he lost control of the car and decided to comeback strongly for the upcoming finals this weekend.
Day two was a busy schedule as there were three races on cards. If Sohil Shah had won the first race yesterday quite comfortably, Dillon, Sai Sanjay and Mohammed Ryan had to earn their victories.
In race2, Dillon shrugged off an otherwise disappointing weekend, to notch his maiden win of the season, Chennai boy Dillon Thomas Zachariah managed to lead with over three seconds on the second finisher Gurugram's Divy Nandan, localite Mohamed Ryan with .250th of a second deficit finished third.
Ryan held off Sohil Shah in the race 3, with over a second difference Mohamed Ryan managed to keep Bengaluru's Sohil Shah behind him in second position as Divy Nandan finished third with six seconds difference. The race had a safety car in the very second lap due to Chirag Ghorpade's car sliding out at C2 from the left side of the track, race continued after two laps.
It was Sai Sanjay’s turn to edge out Sohil Shah in the fourth race to safeguard his top position in the championship standings. He was running third till last few laps but came back strongly to lead with less than a second difference he managed to hold Sohil Shah behind him, finished third was Dillon Thomas Zachariah with over eleven seconds difference.
Indian Touring Cars:
Race1, Arjun Narendran from Arka Motorsports, the 29-year old former National champion, made the best of the situation after pole-sitter and last year’s champion Arjun Balu retired in the second lap with mechanical issues, to post his maiden win of the season. Sandeep Kumar from Rayo Racing with seven seconds difference finished second, while his team mate Jeet Jabakh from Hyderabad settled for third position with further 19sec difference.
Arjun Narendran, winner of Race-1 previous day, swept to another fine win starting from P5 on the reverse grid. Arjun had gained a comfortable lead by the third lap and Championship leader Arjun Balu from Race Concepts, Coimbatore moved up after starting P8, limped behind him for second place with his car suffering from loss of power, earlier Balu was battling out with Sandeep from fourth position and he managed to go past him and was running third, but race was interrupted by a Safety Car in the fourth lap thus reducing the gap, there on with three laps to go, he managed to go past Jeet and also managed to bring down the two seconds difference to just .200th of a second , while Jeet Jabakh finished a distant third in the 12-lap race interrupted by a Safety Car period.
Indian Junior Touring Cars:
Raja Rajan from Chennai, Performance Racing won the race one, his teammate Deepak Ravikumar from Chennai was slower by over a second and settled for second position, Gurunath Meiyappan from Chennai, Race Concepts with about .350th of a second difference was third.
With four seconds lead Akkineni Anand Prasad led a podium sweep for Performance Racing in race two with Raja Rajan and Srinivas Teja was four seconds slower to finish in third position.
Super Stock:
Performance Racing driver Ritesh Rai from Chennai, topped both the races. In race one he won with a lead of over 16sec on the Redline Racing driver from Chennai Narendran S, Diljith TS from Thrissur, DTS Racing was slower by further one second to settle for third. In race2 Ritesh managed to keep Diljith behind him in second position with a difference of eight seconds, as Jason Saldanha from Mangaluru, DB Motorsports finished third with just over one second difference.
MRF Saloons (Toyota Etios):
Gurugram’s Justin Singh consolidated his position by notching his fourth win in six starts.
In race one, Justin Singh was the winner by clocking 16:31.126 and above four seconds lead over Diana Pundole from Pune, Zahan Commissariat from Mumbai finished in third position.
Chandigarh’s Angad Mathroo notched his second win of the season after he managed to keep Justin behind him by two seconds in race two, Jai Prashanth Venkat from Coimbatore was third with 25seconds difference.
Formula LGB 1300:
Defending champion, Bengaluru’s 19-year old Tijil Rao from Momentum Motorsports won the race one that was red-flagged after five laps following a crash involving two cars. Viswas Vijayraj from Nellore, DTS Racing finished in second position as his teammate Vinith Kumar from Tirupur finished third.
Earlier, the experienced Raghul Rangasamy from MSport survived tough competition to notch his third win in this category after starting from P8 on the reverse grid. Raghul received close attention from Viswas Vijayaraj Nellore, DTS Racing before the latter skidded off the track at the last corner when the pair was going wheel-to-wheel. The incident saw Pune’s Sai Shiva Makesh Sankaran from MSport finishing second, followed by Tijil Rao from DTS Racing, Bengaluru.
Volkswagen Polo Cup :
Chennai’s Sandeep Kumar achieved a double by winning both races. He topped Race-1 from pole position and the second from P8 on the reverse grid. Sandeep was followed by Pratik Sonawane from Mumbai in second and Jeet Jabakh from Hyderabad finished third.
Chennai’s Sandeep Kumar completed a clean sweep by winning his fourth consecutive race in this weekend. In race 3 Sandeep was followed by Hyderabad's Jeet Jabakh in second with less than 4 seconds difference as Aditya Swaminathan from Bengaluru finished with less than a second difference. In the last race of the round Sandeep with over four seconds lead managed to win over the second place Raaj Bakharu from Mumbai, while Aditya Swaminathan finished third with six seconds difference.
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