On a day that began in heavy showers and ended in bright sunshine, Coimbatore veteran Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) completed a grand double in the Indian Touring Cars class to head the leaderboard as the fourth round of the MRF MMSC FMSCI National car racing championship, concluded at the MMRT, here on Sunday.
Also achieving a double was Bengaluru’s Rithvik Thomas (Race Concepts) in the Super Stock category.
The MRF F1600 race was abandoned after a 10-car pile-up barely 300 metres from the start. Pole-sitter Yash Aradhya lost grip and spun when he landed in a puddle. The cars behind him crashed into one another. None of the drivers though suffered serious injuries. But with 10 cars badly damaged, it was decided to cancel the scheduled three races and run them in the next round in September.
“The next round in September, will thus have seven races in MRF F1600 category.
“It was an unfortunate incident with Yash running into a puddle and spinning. With so many cars badly damaged, we decided to put off three races and have them in the next round,” said chairman of the meet Vicky Chandhok.
The results (provisional):
Indian Touring Cars (Race-1, 6 laps): 1. Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) (12mins, 49.794secs); 2. Aditya Patel (Rayo Racing) (12:50.491); 3. Dhruv Shivaji Mohite (Rayo Racing) (12:58.907). Race-2 (10 laps): 1. Dhruv Shivaji Mohite (Rayo Racing) (21:19.565); 2. Aditya Patel (Rayo Racing) (21:20.682); 3. Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) (21:28.378). Race-3 (8 laps): 1. Arjun Balu (15:11.978); 2. Aditya Patel (15:17.508); 3. Ishaan Dodhiwala (Team Rayo Racing) (15:28.324).
Super Stock (Race-1, 6 laps): 1. Sudanand Daniel (Race Concepts) (14:15.475); 2. Rithvik Thomas (Race Concepts) (14:15.787); 3. R Rajashekar (Race Concepts) (14:45.952). Race 2 (10 laps): 1. RP Rajarajan (Performance Racing) (22:15.115); 2. Rithvik Thomas (Race Concepts) (22:27.432); 3. Sudanand Daniel (Race Concepts) (22:28.759). Race 3 (8 laps): 1. Rithvik Thomas (16:15.162); 2. Sudanand Daniel (16:15.951); 3. RP Rajarajan (16:40.747).
Volkswagen Ameo Class (Race-2, 8 laps): 1. Jeet Jhabakh (Hyderabad) (20:09.577); 2. Aiman Sadat (Bangladesh) (20:12.811); 3. Siddharth Mehdiratta (Lucknow) (20:13.363). Race-3 (8 laps): 1. Prateek Sonawane (Pune) (16:00.024); 2. Sidharth Mehdiratta (Lucknow) (16:01.383); 3. Shobhomoy Ball (Bengaluru) (16:06.481) .
