Seventeen-year old Brazilian driver Felipe Drugovich was crowned the 2017 MRF Challenge Champion at the Madras Motor Race Track (MMRT) on Saturday. Drugovich finished third and sixth in the two races, but that was enough to seal the championship.
Rinus van Kalmthout dominated race one ahead of Presley Martono and Drugovich. Martono won an action packed race two ahead of van Kalmthout and Danial Frost.
In race one, Martono made a perfect start to lead into the first corner with van Kalmthout passing second-placed Drugovich into the first corner.
Van Kalmthout then passed Martono around the outside of corner three with a brilliant move. The Dutch driver immediately pulled away as Martono fended off Drugovich and Falchero. Drugovich tried to put pressure on Martono, but the Indonesian held his ground.
10-place penalty
Before race two started Drugovich was given a 10-place penalty for a fuel infringement and started in 14th place. Karkosik started on pole alongside Frost in the reverse grid race.
Karkosik had a great start and led into the first corner ahead of Frost. There was chaos at turn two as Manuel Maldonado, Pavan Ravishankar and Perdana Minang all crashed. There was more action as race leader Karkosik spun out of the lead. The race was red flagged on lap two with five cars being out.
At the restart, Frost led ahead of Martono and van Kalmthout. Frost did a wonderful job of keeping both of them behind. On lap 11, Frost ran wide allowing both the drivers to go past.
The results (provisional):
MRF Challenge: Race one (20 laps): 1. Rinus van Kalmthout (Ned, 30mins, 22.676secs); 2. Presley Martono (Ina, 30:29.174); 3. Felipe Drugovich (Bra, 30:31.552).
Race two (15 laps): 1. Martono (22:50.733); 2. van Kalmthout (22:52.713); 3. Danial Frost (Sin, 22:54.318).
National Championship (Saloon cars, 12 laps): Indian Touring Cars: 1. Ashish Ramaswamy (Arka Motorsports) (23:18.381); 2. B. Vijaya Kumar (Prime Racing) (23:48.765); 3. V. Nikanth Ram (Arka Motorsports) (23:56.477).
Indian Junior Touring Cars: 1. A.S. Prabhu (Arka Motorsports) (23:48.082); 2. Kamlesh Parmar (Team N1) (24:08.005); 3. Nikunj D. Vagh (Team N1) (24:48.633).
Super Stock: 1. R.P. Rajarajan (Performance Racing) (25:04.844); 2. Srinivas Teja (Performance Racing) (23:23.023 +1 lap); 3. Swajit Acharaker (Team N1) (23:42.600 +1 lap).
Esteem Cup: 1. Raghul Rangasamy (Performance Racing) (24:46.448); 2. S. Vinod (Team N1) (24:58.109).
Vidiem Superbikes (Support Race, eight laps): 600cc: 1. Siddhanth Koundiya (Bengaluru) (15:32.243); 2. Vishwadev Muraleedharan (Coimbatore) (15:46.550); 3. Arthur Fernando (Tuticorin) (15:46.887).
1000cc: 1. Rish Agarwal (15:06.577); 2. Himanish Amla (15:32.545); 3. K. Yokeshwaran (16:03.838).
