The NK Racing Academy duo of brother Arjun and Kush Maini made a mark for themselves as well as the team at the recently concluded Rotax Max National Karting Championship 2020, held at the Meco Kartopia, Bengaluru. The CRG factory team founded and operated by India’s first Formula One driver Narain Karthikeyan ran five KT2 karts in the Senior MAX category.
The weekend begun with Kush Maini re-entering the championship battle on Round 3, bagging both pole position and the win, closely followed by brother Arjun Maini – who will soon see Helming the Oreca07 LMP2 car alongside Naveen Rao and Narain Karthikeyan himself, with the trio representing India in the Asian Le Mans series.
The academy rookie drivers Divy Nandan from Delhi and David Ryan from Chennai displayed strong pace as well, finishing P10 and P11 respectively, while reserve driver Sohil Shah piloting the fifth kart to a P8 in the race.
Round 4 was a very similar story with Kush Maini and Arjun Maini dominating qualifying 1-2 and the pre-final, final races. David Ryan put an impressive show making some moves to finish P8 while Divy Nandan placed P10 after losing out at the start. There was a change in the reserve driver lineup where, Sohil Shah was replaced by Nigel Abraham Thomas, who got to grips with the new kart immediately and put an impressive show at P6.
The final round of the championship concluded with Arjun Maini winning both drivers and the team championship with a dominant 31-point lead . Sohil Shah, too, performed remarkably, finishing P7. Meanwhile, the rookie drivers David and Divy sailed home in P8 and P10, respectively, with the latter running engine problems towards the end.
Thus, NK Racing academy capped of a dominat debut season and gave CRG its first championship in India. Narain said “We achieved what we set out to do, most importantly in the development of young drivers from India. Also it was a great effort from CRG in giving us a dominant chassis specially made for our Indian track conditions.”