Volkswagen kickstarted its Ameo Cup 2018 season with the first race in Coimbatore. The qualifying session started with Dhruv Mohite finishing first in the qualifying round. Jeet Jhabakh and Saurav Bandyopadhyay finished in second and third position. The Ameo Cup was held alongside the MRF MMSC FMSCI INRC 2018. Though the race was hotly contested, Dhruv, Jeet and Saurav repeated the results of the qualifying session held earlier to finish on the podium. Jeet snatched the lead briefly in the initial part of the race but Dhruv fought back to take the lead on from there till the end of the race. Pratik Sonawane from Pune finished fourth.
Lamborghini India factory driver and Indian racer Armaan Ebrahim was also present at the event, interacting with racers. Also present were Volkswagen’s TC4-A spec race cars which were under testing. This is a part of Volkswagen’s customer sport strategy.
At the post-race press conference, Sirish Vissa, head of Volkswagen Motorsport India said, “Minor tweaks have been made to the suspension and damping to the 2018 Ameo Cup race car to achieve even better performance from the car. The team have been hard at work in the off-season with the development of the 2018 race car and results are evident. The drivers are happy with the way the cars have performed and mechanically the car has been brilliant from the get go. It has been an interesting weekend so far, the drivers have been competitive today, with the qualifying timings between 18 drivers being under 4 seconds. I am sure the championship is going to be very tightly fought and I am looking forward to the rest of the season.”
The second race will be held on Sunday afternoon at Kari Motor Speedway. Watch this space for more updates on the action in the Volkswagen Ameo Cup 2018.