It was a bright sunny Saturday at the Kari Motor Way in Coimbatore, and perfect for the young and experienced drivers of the 19th JK Tyre-FMSCI National Racing Championship to exhibit their skills. The first day of the race weekend saw drivers battling up right from the start with Anindith Reddy and Mohammad Nalwalla of the Euro JK 16 championship bagging podium positions in both races of the day.
A Hyderabad resident, Anindith had a dominant start to the race and maintained a steady pace, skill and determination in both races. The qualifying saw the 26-year-old lose pace to the Mohammed Nalwalla with the latter taking pole, but Race 1 turned out to be Anindith's turf with the driver bringing the car home in 15.47.319 seconds. The second race was no different with Hyderabad lad's sublime performance and helped him add 20 points to his overall standings.
Audi RS5 - The Safety Car
Speaking on the fantastic day, Anindith said, “I decided to play it safe in the first lap after what happened in the last round.” The driver had moved down to fourth position after a disastrous round and had scored just 5 points in Round 2 of the championship. Nevertheless, with the double wins, the 26-year-old now has managed to grab 58 points in the championship and has climbed up in the top three spots for the championship title.
While Anindith dominated the leaderboard, Ananth Shanmugam of Bangalore and Mohammed Nalwalla of Mumbai bagged second and third places respectively in both races. With 64 points, Ananth is one of the top contenders in the Euro JK 16 championship, but just behind Mumbai boy Nayan Chatterjee, who may not have had an exciting race day today, but still leads the championship with 68 points. At the fifth position in Kolhapur's Dhruv Mohite with 44 points, while Mohammed Nalwalla is still behind in the standings with 29 points.
Racers On the Track
Coming to the LGB Formula 4 series, it was Vishnu Prasad who continued to lead the championship and is closer than ever to winning the title. The driver started at the second position behind Saran Tmars of Privateer in the qualifying rounds, but managed to grab the lead in the race, while facing stiff competition from Raghul Rangasamy who finished second. Prasad also managed to put up the fastest lap of the day at 1.11.824 seconds while finished the 15 lap race in 19.58.273 seconds.
Vishnu now holds a total of 46 points in the championship, while Raghul of Meco Racing has bagged 37 points, followed by Rohit Khanna of Dark Don with 21 points.
In the JK Touring Cars series, Ashish Ramaswamy of Red Rooster Performance was the undisputed winner. However, the Bangalore-based driver did not have the perfect day and was pushed to down to second in the qualifying rounds with Deepak Chinnappa of Race Concepts taking the lead. Nevertheless, Ashish pushed his skills to the maximum in the race and took the pole position, while also clocking the fastest lap of 1.11.456 seconds.
JK Tyre National Racing Championship
The race nevertheless did see a fantastic battle for the pole as Deepak was constantly on Ashish's tail making this a well-earned win. Ashish continues to lead on the leaderboard with 100 points in his kitty and is the closest to the championship title. Finishing third in the race was Coimbatore's very own Vijay Kumar B.
The second and final race day of Round 3 of the 19th JK-FMSCI National Racing Championship will see Nayan making a comeback as he will be looking to continue his dominance in the Euro 16 championship, while both Vishnu Prasad and Ashish Ramaswamy will try to maintain their dominance in the LGB Formula 4 and JK Touring car series respectively.
For the third round's final race on Sunday (today), spectators will be in for a treat as international stunt driver Terry Grant will be the showstopper at the end of the day and will be showcasing some of his legendary moves on the car.
