Teenager Ashwin Datta and Arjun Balu came up with impressive performances in the MRF F1600 and Indian Touring Cars categories respectively in the the second round of the MRF MMSC FMSCI Indian National Racing Championship at the Kari Motor Speedway here today.
Bengaluru's Varun Anekar (Race Concepts) in the Super Stock class, Goa's Chris D'Souza (Unimek Racing) in Indian Junior Touring Cars and Erode driver Vinod S (Team N1) in the Esteem Cup also notched up wins.
The trio emerged unscathed from an incident-filled race of combined 16-car grid that witnessed two safety car periods.
The two Formula LGB 1300 races saw close competition with Bengaluru's Sohil Shah (MSport) winning the first after a close fight with team-mate Nabil Hussain of Chennai while Ashwin Datta took the second race that witnessed a couple of crashes.
Datta, 19, drove brilliantly after dropping from second to fourth and overtook three cars to jump to the front and eventually win the race.
In sharp contrast, Datta earlier enjoyed an untroubled ride to victory in the first of the three MRF F1600 races scheduled for the weekend.
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Meanwhile, Kolhapur's Dhruv Mohite put in a command performance to win the Volkswagen Ameo Cup race, initially losing track position after starting from pole.
For 43-year old Balu from Coimbatore, it was a comfortable lights-to-flag victory. Starting from pole position, he gradually built up a sizeable lead with Ashish Ramaswamy (ARKA Motorsports) and veteran Vidyaprakash (Prime Racing) in tow.
Results (Provisional, all 15 laps unless mentioned): MRF F1600 (Race 1): 1. Ashwin Datta (Chennai) (15mins, 52. 195secs), 2. Raghul Rangasamy (Mamallapuram) (15:59.749), 3. Nirmal Umashanker (Chennai) (16:03. 412).
Indian Touring Cars (Race 1): 1. Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) (16:38.541), 2. D Vidya Prakash (Prime Racing) (16:46.128), 3. B Vijay Kumar (Prime Racing) (16:47.238).
Super Stock (Race 1): 1. Varun Anekar (Race Concepts) (22:43.
752), 2. Deepak Ravikumar (Infinite Piston) (22:45. 806), 3. K Srinivas Teja (Performance Racing) (22:48.777).
Indian Junior Touring Cars (Race 1): 1. Chris D'Souza (Unimek Racing) (22:54.799), 2. Prabhu AS (ARKA Motorsports) (22:57.507), 3. Nikunj Vagh (Team N1) (23:01.287).
Esteem Cup (Race 1): 1. Vinod S (Team N1) (22:50.081). Only one finisher.
Formula LGB 1300 (Race 1): 1. Sohil Shah (MSport) (19:20.665), 2. Nabil Hussain (MSport) (19:21.179), 3. A Balaprasath (DTS Racing) (19:22.636). Race 2: 1. Ashwin Datta (17:32.137), 2. Rupesh Sivakumar (MSport) (17:51.678), 3. Nabil Hussain (17:55.093).
Volkswagen Ameo Cup (Race 1): 1. Dhruv Mohite (Kohlapur) (17:44.976), 2. Jeet Jhabakh (Hyderabad) (17:49. 205), 3. Saurav Bandyopadhyay (Thane) (17:54.758).