Formula 1600 – second race for the day, first lap, turn five, two cars in the middle order collided with each other at the Kari Motor Speedway. Not a good way to start a race at all. The front end of one car collided with the rear right wheel of another car resulting in the car hitting the barrier and the wheel tearing from the car to roll and come to a halt right in the middle of the track. The other cars continued racing unaware of the incident that took place behind. Yellow flag was raised, and the safety car was called in to lead the race for the next three laps. Even in the second race, two cars crashed and had to retire from the race. Amidst all the chaos, Ashwin Datta carried his superb form to win both the races. Yash Aradhya and Nabil Hussain took the second and third positions in the second race, while Nayan Chatterjee and Raghul Rangasamy finished on podium in the third race of the INRC 2018.
Veeresh Prasad from Race Concepts put on a stellar show to emerge at the top of the SuperStock category. He started 13th from the grid and took advantage of the chaos that was happening in the middle order, fought his way get behind the tail of Srinivas Teja and Deepak Ravikumar. A few laps later, Veeresh had taken down both Srinivas and Deepak and went on to win the race. Deepak and Srinivas finished second and third. Mikhail Merchant from Team Game Over got the first win of this season of the Indian Junior Touring Cars, as he finished on top, followed by Kamlesh Parmar and Prabhu A S. Raghul Rangasamy emerged winner in the Esteem Cup, followed by Vinod S.
Despite starting fourth on the grid, Arjun Balu seemed indestructible and took and early lead. He overtook the leading trio in the early part of the race. Arjun pulled of a stellar overtake snatching the lead from Nikanth Ram on the main straight of the first car in the first lap itself. From there on, he took a spectacular lead and put on as much as space between him and the rest of the pack. For a brief part of the race, N Leela Krishnan was behind Arjun Balu in second place, but he dropped down the order, to be overtaken by Ashish Ramasamy and Vijaya Kumar. The yellow flag was raised due to a safety issue and with nine laps to go, the green signal was waved off. It was pretty much a straightforward victory for Arjun, as he blazed through the circuit. Ashish Ramasamy and Vijaya Kumar finished second and third.
In a relatively incident free race of the day, Nabil Hussain won the third race. Ashwin Datta took the lead from Sohil Shah to finish second, while the latter finished third despite starting off from pole position.
The second race of the Volkswagen Ameo Cup compensated for the incident free first race of yesterday, with some incidents that saw an unexpected twist in the results. One of the two women drivers in the Ameo Cup 2018, Shivani was on pole position at the start of the race (reverse grid order). Just four laps into the race, Manoj Yanamdala’s car toppled over near the long parabola curve in the circuit. This forced the marshalls to raise the red flag and the race was stopped. After a few minutes, the grid was rearranged and Dhruv was placed in pole position, followed by Shivani and Affan (Bangladesh). The race then commenced and Dhruv took the lead and there was no looking back for him. Shivani, meanwhile had problems with the gearbox and throttle of her car after the main straight and was pushed down the order. Affan was keeping Dhruv’s tail and the duo were leading. Saurav was in the fourth position after the red flag incident and he fought his way to a third place, finishing the race on podium. Dhruv won both races of the opening season, while Saurav finished third in both races.
At the post-race briefing, Sirish Vissa, head of Volkswagen Motorsport India said, “We have had a truly exciting race today with a lot of jostling amongst the drivers. The technical team have performed brilliant over the course of the weekend. While the MRF tyres have performed reliably despite changing weather conditions over the last three days. I would like congratulate winners from race 1 and race 2 and wish them all the very best for the next 3 rounds. For the next round of races we move to MMRT and it will be exciting to see how these drivers perform in round 2.”
Here are the results of the day:
MRF Formula 1600 (Race 2): 1. Ashwin Datta (Chennai) (17mins, 20.586secs); 2. Yash Aradhya (Bengaluru) (17:23.803); 3. Nabil Hussain (Chennai) (17:24.995).
Race 3: 1. Ashwin Datta (Chennai) (20:00.619); 2. Nayan Chatterjee (Mumbai) (20:03.107); 3. Raghul Rangasamy (Mamallapuram) (20:04.163).
Indian Touring Cars (Race 2): 1. Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) (21:00.044); 2. Ashish Ramaswamy (Arka Motorsports) (21:06.030); 3. B Vijaya Kumar (21:09.814).
Super Stock (Race 2): 1. Veeresh Prasad (Race Concepts) (19:00.180); 2. Deepak Ravikumar (Infinite Piston) (19:07.638); 3. K Srinivas Teja (Performance Racing) (19:18.869).
Indian Junior Touring Cars (Race 2): 1. Mikhail Merchant (Team Game Over) (20:08.939); 2. Kamlesh Parmar (Team N1) (20:14.901); 3. Prabhu AS (ARKA Motorsports) (19:15.470). Esteem Cup (Race 2): 1. Raghul Ramasamy (Performance Racing) (19:33.803); 2. Vinod S (Team N1) (19:39.926).
Formula LGB 1300 (Race 3): 1. Nabil Hussain (MSport) (17:25.704); 2. Ashwin Datta (Momentum Motorsports) (17:32.692); 3. Sohil Shah (MSport) (17:32.936).
Volkswagen Ameo Cup (Race 2, 12 laps): 1. Dhruv Mohite (Kolhapur) (16:05.547); 2. Affan Sadat Safwan Islam (Chittagong, Bangladesh) (16:10.334); 3. Saurav Bandyopadhyay (Thane) (16:10.930).
https://evoindia.com/mrf-mmsc-fmsci-inrc-2018/