Defending champion Raghul Rangasamy, hailing from the nearby temple town of Mamallapuram, pulled off a grand double to put himself in contention for the title in the premier MRF F1600 category on the opening day of the fifth and final round of the MRF MMSC FMSCI Indian National Car Racing Championship at the MMRT here on Sunday.
Raghul, 26, shrugged off an otherwise inconsistent season so far, and won two of the three races today that were carried over from the rain-affected round four, besides finishing second behind Bengaluru’s Yash Aradhya in the other outing to pick up 68 points.
Raghul jumped five spots to move from seventh to second on the leaderboard. He lies just seven points behind championship leader 18-year old Sohil Shah from Bengaluru who drew a blank in race-3 due to a drive-shaft problem after finishing second and third in the other two races.
Finely poised
With four races of the final round to be run over the next two days and a maximum of 100 points to be won, the championship is finely poised.
Sohil (114 points), Raghul (107) and Nayan Chatterjee (97) occupy the top three spots. Behind the trio are Yash (86), Vishnu Prasad (85) from Chennai and Faridabad’s Manav Sharma (70).
Meanwhile, Bengaluru’s Chirag Ghorpade (Momentum Motorsports) qualified for pole position in the Formula LGB 1300 category where Chennai-based Ashwin Datta has virtually clinched the title, enjoying a 50-point lead going into this weekend’s double header.
Ashwin’s closest rival Sohil, opted out of the two races.
Mumbai’s Saurav Bandyopadhyay took pole position in the Volkswagen Ameo Class ahead of two guest drivers from South Africa, Tasmin Peper and Jeffrey Kruger.
The results (provisional, all eight laps unless mentioned):
MRF F1600 (carried over from round 4): Race-two: 1. Yash Aradhya (Bengaluru) (13mins, 33.380s); 2. Raghul Rangasamy (Mamallapuram) (13:33.616); 3. Sohil Shah (Bengaluru) (13:39.154).
Race-3: 1. Raghul Rangasamy (13:31.752); 2. Sohil Shah (13:33.747); 3. Vishnu Prasad (Chennai) (13:37.234).
Race-4: Raghul Rangasamy (13:29.886); 3. Nayan Chatterjee (Mumbai) (13:35.915); 3. Yash Aradhya (13:37.252) .
