Ahluwalia wins autocross

The inaugural Maruti Suzuki Autocross championship ends at the BIC

THE BUDDH INTERNATIONAL Circuit played host to the grand finale of the inaugural edition of the Maruti Suzuki Autocross championship where Amanpreet Ahluwalia won the overall championship and walked away with a grand prize of `1 lakh and a brand new Maruti Suzuki Swift.

The round featured the best eight racers from each of the six championship classes from around the country vying for the top two spots to qualify for the national finale. The qualified twelve would then drive identically stock Maruti Suzuki Swifts with elimination rounds narrowing down till the victor was crowned.

TMOD Classes

The MOD classes run only two-wheel drive vehicles with four distinctive classes distinguished on the basis of engine cubic capacity. In the smallest upto 1100cc class, Arpit Mangal took top honours in his Maruti Suzuki Alto K10. Following him was Jagbir Nirwan and Harvinder Bhola.

The 1100cc-1400cc class was flooded with Maruti Suzuki Esteems as Achintya Mehrotra went on to win the class from Chaitanya and Lakshya Veer Dabas. The upto 1650cc class saw Dr Bikku Babu showcase his years of INRC experience and he flew away with the class victory from JJ Sandhu.

The above 1650 class saw Delhi boy Amit Sharma beat Jagmeet Gill to win the category and title.

Open Class

The 4WD Open class saw the Northern Gypsy boys Samrat Yadav and Amanpreet dominate and reach the finals without much drama. But their finals run more than made up for it and kept the crowd guessing till the very end as Samrat technically won, crossing the line comfortably ahead of Aman. But a five second time penalty for dislodging a cone during his run was handed out to Samrat making Aman come out on top as the winner.

The 2WD Open Category was the class spectators were eagerly waiting to watch, with heavily modified Maruti Suzuki Esteems, Balenos, Zens and just the lone rally R2spec Polo (of Bikku). Amit Sharma put in a calculated but committed drive, in the first semi-final, to beat Jagbir to reach the finals. In the other semi-final, Philippos did cross the finish line ahead of Bikku but a 15-second jump-start penalty saw Bikku go through to the finals. The finals saw Bikku make a driving error which resulted in Amit Sharma winning the 2WD Open Category.

Overall

The overall championship saw showroomspec Maruti Swifts line up two at a time and being handed to the competing drivers. Since they were mainly stock in setup, the category champions struggled to quickly come to terms with the cars. The quickest to adapt to the new vehicle were finalists Achintya Mehrotra and Amanpreet Ahluwalia as these two won all of their respective heats. Yet again drama occurred in the finals as Achintya crossed the finish line two car lengths ahead of Amanpreet. But he was imposed with a time penalty after hitting a cone during his run, thus making Amanpreet the first national autocross winner. ⌧