With the final round of the Ameo Cup 2017 coming to a close, Karminder Singh clinched the title after coming in to this weekend a favourite. Sandeep Kumar managed to claim the tightly contested second place in the championship with Dhruv Mohite settling for third.
Karminder Singh led the point standings entering this weekend with 384 points, a whole 104 points ahead of second placed Dhruv. Saurav Bandyopadhyay was a further 20 points behind, followed closely by Sandeep and Jeet Jhabakh. With three races over the weekend, not only was the second place of the championship up for grabs, but if Karminder had a bad outing, he could have lost the championship.
Saurav set the fastest time in qualifying to put himself on pole, and Anning Sun, a guest racer from China joined him on the first row. Sandeep was in P3, while Karminder only managed to qualify eighth on the grid. Nevertheless, the top eight racers were separated by just a second. In Race 1, Saurav got off to a good start and steered clear of traffic behind him. Anning, Sandeep and Donovan got off to clean starts as well. Right before C2, Jeet clipped Aditya Pawar from the rear causing him to spin and both retired from the race. Dhruv was caught in the incident as well, and managed to get back in to the race however he had trouble with his ABS and could not complete the race. The incident also called out the safety car. Saurav controlled the restart and stayed in the lead, and finished the race on top. Anning Sun came in second while Sandeep Kumar finished third. Karminder only managed to finish seventh, behind Donovan Vaz, Siddharth Kotecha and Rashad Khan.
Race 2 started with a reverse grid from eighth, putting Karminder on the first row. The cars were shod with wet tyres for the first time this season, owing to sporadic rain on the track. Karminder took the lead right off the bat, and lead the entire race pulling a comfortable lead at the front. The conditions were continuously changing, shifting between wet and dry and a lot of drivers went off track while tackling the tricky surface. Sandeep brought his car home on second while Affan Sadat who had started on pole finished third. They were closely followed by Dhruv Mohite (who had started at the back of the grid and climbed all the way up to fourth) and Rashad Khan who finished fifth again. The win allowed Karminder to clinch the title with one race tow go, but the runners-up and second runners-up was still to be decided.
Race 3 was a dry race, and the starting order was decided by the second fastest lap in qualifying. China’s Anning Sun started the race on pole, followed by Donovan Vaz and Saurav. Saurav, Sandeep and Dhruv were all in contention for that coveted second spot in the championship standings. Anning won the race, followed by Karminder who drove an extremely aggressive race with Dhruv in third. With the points totalled, Sandeep clinched the second spot behind Karminder in the overall standings followed by Dhruv Mohite. Anmol Singh wins the Junior Cup, which was contested between all the amateur drivers.