Trucking champions crowned

Tata T1 Prima Truck racing completes its fourth season of truck racing in India

TATA COMPLETED THE fourth season of its highly successful truck racing series – the Tata Prima T1 Truck Racing championship at the Buddh International Circuit. With four races over the weekend, the action-packed sprints saw nail-biting finishes, some decisive moves and a lot of contact.

Kicking off the weekend, Uttar Pradesh’s Pitambar just stormed away from the field to win the Super class. Pitambar was consistently running in the late 1 minute 50s, which was around a second shy from the pace the more experienced Champion class drivers were running at. He had a clean start into the first corner and had six truck lengths between him and the field by the time they reached the end of the kilometre-long back-straight of the BIC. Pitambar was joined by Shivnihal Singh and Gurujant Singh, both of whom also hail from UP.

After his hard-fought battle last year wherein he emerged victorious, Andhra Pradesh’s Nagarjuna showed his class yet again by winning the Champion class race. This makes it two victories out of two for the southern superstar, as he was yet again the fastest man throughout the training, practice and qualifying sessions. Malkeet Singh yet again finished second behind Nagarjuna for the second year running. Malkeet had shown initial signs of charge for the win, but he faded away once the race reached the halfway mark. Bhag Chand finished third, another podium to his name after his first in 2016.

Driving for team Dealer Daredevils, David Vrsecky won both races of the Pro class. While it was a bit of plain sailing for the double

TEuropean Truck Racing champion in the first race, he held on to win the second one by a narrow margin. As expected of the Pro class, the racing was neck and neck with none giving the other any space. David was lucky to have escaped the second lap melee at turn four which caught out a couple of drivers and forced current British truck racing champion Ryan Smith to retire. With just two laps to the end of the race, Norbert Kiss was forced off the track and he was stuck in the gravel pit with no chance of getting his truck back on the track. The organisers deemed it dangerous for the racers to soldier on and hence red flagged the race, handing David his first win on Indian soil. German Gerhard Korber took second place in a relatively relaxed race while reigning Prima champion David Jenkins was third.

While Norbert and Ryan could have hoped for a better finish to the first race, they certainly brought the spice along for the finale. Starting from right at the back, both got rocketing starts with Norbert up to sixth and Ryan two spots behind. Norbert made sure that he wasn’t going to give up a chance to finish on the podium and started disposing off the members of the leading group. He got third place from Jenkins on lap eight and emerged on top in a long-drawn battle with Korber for second, the decisive move coming with just two laps left on the board. Until that point, David had nearly three seconds over the rest and seemed to be cruising for the finish. However, Norbert made sure he didn’t get it too easy as the two were separated by 0.25 seconds at the finish line. This marked the first win for Team Dealer Daredevils with reigning team winners Tata Technologies coming in second thanks to Norbert’s exuberant driving.

The weekend was capped off by performances by Akshay Kumar and singer KK. ⌧