Ramaswamy triumphs in ITC race
Bengaluru’s Ashish Ramaswamy of Red Rooster Performance team won the premier Indian Touring Cars class race in the MRF MMSC FMSCI Indian National Racing Championship at the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore.
Running second behind fellow Ben gal urea n Deepak Paul Chinnappa (Race Concepts) until two of the 15 laps remaining, 25year old Ramaswamy passed the leader who was struggling with loss of two gears, to win.
The duo finished well ahead of third-placed C. Rajaram (Prime Racing) on Saturday.
In the Volkswagen Ameo Cup, Delhi’s Karminder Singh, last year’s Vento Cup winner, grabbed the pole position after being quickest in both the free practice sessions before topping the qualifying time sheets.
Chennai’s Sandeep Kumar was second ahead of Kolhapur’s Dhruv Mohite.
Chinnappa started on pole after defending champion and Arjun Narendran (Red Rooster Performance) missed the race due to engine problems and dropped to last after failing to engage the clutch when the lights went off.
However, he fought his way back and eventually passed frontrunner Ramaswamy to open up what seemed to be a winning lead. But with two laps to go, Chinnappa lost two gears and Ramaswamy seized the opportunity to regain the lead.
Narendran was the quickest in both the free practice sessions. In the second practice outing, he went in hard at Turn 1, locked up the brakes and slammed into the kerb causing damage to his car’s chassis and the engine block.
In the qualifying session, Narendran was again the quickest, but towards close the engine expired.
Following inspection, the team decided to change the engine while opting to sit out the race.
“I thought I did well in practice and qualifying in terms of timings, but I damaged the car during FP2 where I hit the kerb after locking up the brakes. In qualifying session, I was quick, but then, the engine blew. So, I had to sit out the first race and will start the second race from the back of the grid,” said Narendran.