Putting on a Show
Big bikes at India’s premier racetrack
ANOSH KHUMBATTA
IN NOVEMBER, DELHI’S BUDDH INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT CAME alive for the fourth and final round of the JK Tyre National Racing Championship, where three classes of car racers battled it out for the last of the year’s championship points. To inject some additional excitement into the already high-revving weekend, the organisers introduced two-race mini championships exclusively for big bikes, in Supersport 600-cc and Superbike 1,000-cc classes. Some of the country’s top riders were in attendance, and we saw a 32-bike grid in the Superbike class, and 18 riders on the Supersport bikes, which in this case were all 675-cc Triumph Daytonas. One race in each class was held on Saturday, and one in each class was held on Sunday, after which points were tallied and champions crowned.
Supersport Class
RACE ONE
Saturday’s Supersport race saw Delhi’s Gurvinder Singh, Tamil Nadu’s Deepak Ravikumar and Rajasthan’s Vijay Singh locked in battle for the duration of the eight-lap race. On the last lap Gurvinder dug deep and set the fastest lap of the race (2:04.574) to claim victory, less than a second ahead of Deepak. Vijay secured the last spot on the podium, with the rest of the pack about 20 seconds behind.
RACE TWO
On Sunday Deepak Ravikumar seemed to be on fire, getting a great start and setting the fastest lap of the race (2:03.901) on the third. He proceeded to stretch out his lead through the rest of the eight-lapper, and finished a comfortable 8.486 seconds ahead of Vijay Singh in second place. The battle for third place raged on till the end; however, it was Delhi’s Kulwant Singh who secured his spot on the podium by finishing the race just .047 of a second ahead of the previous day’s winner, Gurvinder Singh.
Having collected 12 points for second place on Saturday and 15 points for first place on Sunday, it was Deepak Ravikumar who took home the championship trophy, having netted 27 points for his consistent performance. In second place on the points table was Gurvinder Singh, who bagged a perfect 15 points on Saturday, but only nine points for a fourth-place finish on Sunday to end up with 24 points, while Vijay Singh stood third in the championship with 22 points.
ASIF ZUBAIRI