Chennai: Deepak Ravikumar from Chennai led a brilliant 1-2 finish for Momentum Motorsport along with Bengaluru’s Chirag Ghorpade in the Formula LGB 1300 race in the first round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Car Racing Championship 2021 at the MMRT here on Saturday.
Starting from pole position, Ravikumar had more problems dealing with numb fingers than the competition in the eight-lap race that was run behind the Safety Car for the opening four laps following an on-track incident. “Initially, it was pretty close and also there was numbness in my left hand fingers which led to wrong gear selection. However, I managed to overcome this problem and thereafter, it was pretty smooth sailing,” said Ravikumar.
Behind him, Ghorpade covered a lot of ground starting from P8 to finish a deserving second ahead of Kotagiri’s Amir Sayed (M Sport) who too cut through the field from P7.
Earlier, Shahan Ali Mohsin, the 17-year old from Agra and a multiple National Karting champion, snatched the pole position in the MRF F1600 category just ahead of Chirag Ghorpade (Bengaluru) while K Suriya Varadhan from Coimbatore and Bengaluru’s Rishon Rajiv occupied the second row.
In the popular Saloon car category, Coimbatore veteran and defending champion Arjun Balu (Race Concepts), expectedly took the pole position followed by the Rayo Racing pair from Hyderabad Anindith Reddy and Jeet Jhabakh.
Another Bengalurean, Aditya Sawaminathan, qualified for pole position in the Volkswagen Polo category with Bangladesh’s Aiman Sadat in second position and Kolkata’s Arya Singh third.
The results (Provisional):
Formula LGB 1300 (Race-1, 8 laps): 1. Deepak Ravikumar (Momentum Motorsport, Chennai) (20mins, 04.575secs); 2. Chirag Ghorpade (Momentum Motorsport, Bengaluru) (20:10.045); 3. Amir Sayed (MSport, Kotagiri) (20:12.571).
Qualifying – MRF F1600: 1. Shahan Ali Mohsin (Agra) (Best lap – 01:40.148); 2. Chirag Ghorpade (Bengaluru) (01:40.741); 3. K Suriya Varadhan (Coimbatore) (01:40.977).
All Saloons – Indian Touring Cars: 1. Arjun Balu (Race Concepts, Coimbatore) (01:50.927); 2. Anindith Reddy (Rayo Racing, Hyderabad) (01:52.329); 3. Jeet Jhabakh (Rayo Racing, Hyderabad) (01:52.592).
Super Stock: 1. Rithvik Thomas (Race Concepts, Bengaluru) (01:58.645); 2. Deepak Ravikumar (Performance Racing, Chennai) (01;58.841); 3. RP Raja Rajan (Performance Racing, Chennai) (01:59.433).
Indian Junior Touring Cars: 1. Varun Anekar (Race Concepts, Bengaluru) (01:58.911); 2. K Srinivas Teja (Performance Racing, Chennai) (02:03.402); 3. Hatim Shabbir Jamnagarwala (Performance Racing, Chennai) (02:05.029).
Volkswagen Polo: 1. Aditya Swaminathan (Bengaluru) (1:56.609); 2. Aiman Sadat (Bangladesh) (1:56.747); 3. Arya Singh (Kolkata) (1:56.993).
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