MOTORSPORTS

Action from the 2W and 4W national road racing championships, INRC and the Rainforest Challenge

AFTER ENDURING A DOUBLE DNF in the previous round, a pole position and a win was exactly what TVS Racing and the national champion Jagan Kumar needed from the third round of the MMSC MRF 2W National Racing Championship in the Super Sport under 165cc class.

Jagan could not make the most of his starting advantage, falling prey to Honda Ten10 Racing’s Rajiv Sethu and Mathana Kumar on the opening lap. Reliability issues struck the Honda boys as on the second lap itself, Mathana had to call it quits while Rajiv managed to drag his bike to the finish, losing two spots to Jagan and Harry Sylvester.

Mathana bounced back to win his maiden Super Sport race after fighting off Sylvester for the win. Just half a second between the two at the finish line, Mathana helped bring some much-needed cheer to the team who had a torrid opening race. Yet again, Rajiv was able to get his bike on to the last step of the podium.

Aravind fended off Naresh Babu and Aravind Ganesh to clinch victory in the first race of the Pro Stock upto 165cc class. The Honda Ten10 Racing rider was able to replicate his form yet again in the second race as the same trio finished on the rostrum, positions unchanged.

In the female Stock upto 165cc class, championship leader Aishwarya Pissay won the race by a huge margin of ten seconds from Shruthi Nagarajan. Initially, Kalyani Potekar had finished ahead of Shruthi, but was found guilty of causing a collision that ended Alisha Abdullah’s race and was slapped with a ten second time penalty, demoting her to third.

In the Super Sport 300-400cc class, Dinesh Menon was able to break Amarnath Menon’s winning streak as he became the second victor of the class in 2017. Riding for the newly formed Team Alisha Abdullah Racing, Dinesh fought tooth and nail with Amarnath until the latter crashed out on the final lap. Moto-Rev’s Deepak Ravikumar inherited the second spot after the Gusto Racing rider’s fall, while Vivek Pillai completed the podium spots for Rockers Racing.

Amarnath repaid the favour in the last race of the weekend by earning his fifth win of the season. Dinesh made an error and lost out massively to the championship leader. Amarnath had to fight for the win as Antony Peter was on his tail throughout the race, ultimately the gap between the two was less than a tenth of a second at the finish. Deepak claimed the third spot.

With rains lashing down in Chennai, MMSC have had to postpone the following round of the championship by a week which is now slated to be held on September 9-10. ⌧