TEAM HONDA’S MAGNIFICENT 2018
Team Honda Racing picks up six Team Championship Title Awards from nine gravel track outings and the Team riders in their turn bag a colossal seventeen victories, plus eleven 2nd positions and thirteen 3rd positions during Stafford-honda’s highly successful 2018 Motocross season. The Team and the outstanding riders total up a whopping 41 podiums during the season just completed.
The second part of the 2018 season - from the Colombo Supercross latejune through the Cavalry, Gunner, Commando, and Gajaba Rounds - Team Honda totted up 12 outright race victories, of the season’s total 17, and 4 of the Team’s 6 Championship Titles.
Team Honda reserved its sting in the tail for the season finale at the Gajaba Supercross. Team riders Imal Manchanayake (Super Motard) and Shanuka Sandaruwan (Street/trail 250) won both their events with ease - 4 outright victories - and Team Honda Racing made it a clean sweep for the day winning the Team Championship Title, too.
The Honda CRF250 dirt tracker, the popular and regular victor in Grand Prix Motox and Super Motard around the world, successfully carried Team Honda riders Gayan Sandaruwan, Shanuka Sandaruwan and Imal Manchanayake to their podiums and awards.
In a dominant run from the Colombo Round to the Gajaba Round, Imal Manchanayake the diminutive powerhouse on the Honda CRF250R vanquished all-comers, as he has done during the last three racing seasons, and cruised to 8 wins at the five venues. The recognized news source Motor Sports Network (MSN) documenting the results emphasized Imal’s “incredible lead” in the Super Motard races which gave him more victories.
Shanuka Sandaruwan not only took 3 clear wins in his regular Street/trail category at the Colombo Supercross and at Gajaba, but collected 14 more podium positions, which includes a third in the Racing Motocross category, in which he is a visitor.
Team Titles at the Walawa, Sigiriya, Colombo, Cavalry, Gunner and Gajaba Rounds are the 6 Awards added to the many taken home by Stafford Team Honda in recent times, Shanuka Sandaruwan and Imal Manchanayake the Team Honda riders.
Gayan Sandaruwan, ninetime National Motocross Champion and multiple-time winner of The Best Rider of the Day Title in local motocross racing, cemented a brilliantly outstanding race career, when he took clear victory streets ahead of the second rider in the Commando Race 2, and was awarded the Best Rider of the Commando Challenge for his dazzling performances that day.
The race meetings were organized by Sri Lanka Autosport Drivers Association (SLADA) and Sri Lanka Association of Racing Drivers and Riders (SLARDAR), in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Army Military Academy, and the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Regiment, the Vijayabahu Infantry Regiment, the Armoured Corps, the Artillery Regiment, the Commando Regiment, the Gajaba Infantry Regiment, all of the Sri Lanka Army, together with the Sri Lanka Air Force and the Sri Lanka Navy.
The scintillating 2018 gravel racing season is now resting. In due time the curtain will go up on 2019. Veteran and Team Honda Captain Don Gayan Sandaruwan will not sit on the grid come 2019, instead remaining ambassador for the sport, and mentor to future champions. In the season ahead, loads more silverware await Team Honda and star riders Imal Manchanayake and Shanuka Sandaruwan.