Deepak, Jagan and Hari victorious in round 1
The season opener for the 2016 MMSC 2W NRC saw nail-biting action as well as two all-female races
RROUND 1 OF THE INMRC kicked off with a bang under the cloudy skies in Coimbatore last month. With 16 races fielding riders in ten classes over the weekend, one could hardly peel their eyes off the track, lest they miss out on any on-track action. The inaugural round also hosted the one-make championships. Amongst the manufacturers, Honda, TVS and Suzuki hosted races for novice and open classes (Honda
CBR 150R for Novice and CBR 250R for Open). The national championship included the Stock, Pro-Stock and the Indian Supersport Category. In addition to this, the championship includes two support classes for women, namely Honda Ladies Race and Alisha Abdullah Training Academy (AATA) Ladies Race in association with TVS.
Qualifying
The AATA support race saw Haritha R take pole ahead of Rajeshawari and Olesya. In the Honda ladies’ category, Pune’s Pooja Dabhi led the proceedings from Aishwarya PM and Shruthi.
13-year old Aron Gunawardena from Sri Lanka, who is racing with an FMSCI license dominated the Gixxer Novice Class with an iron fist and took pole after setting a blistering lap of 1:21.425.
Close on his heels, Joseph Mathew and Anthony Peter clinched the second and third place respectively. Amongst the senior riders in the open class, B Rajnikanth from Chennai set the best time ahead of Meka Vidhuraj and Prabhu.
The Honda CBR 150R Novice class saw Chennai lad Abhay Prashan take the pole ahead of Shreyas and Shankar. The competition in the Honda CBR 250R class was a closely fought battle with the top three qualifying within 0.5 second of each other. Mathana Kumar of Ten10 Racing took the lead with Abhishek Vasudev of Apex Racing qualifying only 0.1 second later. The first row was completed by Mathana’s teammate Rajiv in the third place.
In the TVS camp, Yashas set the best timing and led the front row ahead of Ashfaq Ahmed and Hari Prasad in the Novice class.
The National Championship fielded three classes viz. Stock (previously known as Group - D), Pro Stock (Group – C) and the premier class Super Sport (Group-B). In the Stock category, Raj Kumar set the best timing and led the densely packed grid of 32 riders, maximum allowable at the Kari Speedway. Raj Kumar was followed by Anish Damodar and Anthony Peter.
In the intermediate class, the Pro Stock category, Hari Krishnan and teammate Rajiv Sethu fought tooth and nail to secure the pole. Eventually, Hari started from pole, followed by Rajiv and Dinesh Kumar from RACR. It’s noteworthy that the top three in this class qualified within a span of 0.3 seconds. The TVS factory team led the way in the Super Sport category with experienced rider, Jagan Kumar snatching the lead from Harry Sylvester. They were followed by R Deepak of RACR team.
Races
Racing began with the five laps of the AATA Ladies Cup, which saw polesitter Haritha R cross the chequered flag first. The battle for the second place led to Priyanka Rao and Renuka Gajendra swapping places during the race, with the former winning the duel.
In the Super Sport class R Deepak converted his third place to a win by outpacing TVS Factory riders Jagan Kumar and Harry Sylvester who finished in that order. The Pro Stock and the Super Sport grid were clubbed together. In the Pro-Stock race, Anthony Peter won the race from Anish Damodar by 0.002 seconds!
In the Gixxer Cup, Aron G continued his flawless onslaught from pole and secured a win ahead of the battling duo of Joseph and Amarnath.
Abhishek Vasudev put on an excellent performance and briefly led the race in the CBR 250R class from Mathana K. However, misfortune struck him at the tricky C3-C4 chicane where he lost the front end. Mathana went on to win from Rajiv and Kishore.
Racing the new Apache RTR 200s, Kannan won the race by a country mile from Arvind Ganesh. There was a close battle for third place which Rahil Peerzade victored.
The Gixxer Cup Open Class race was restarted as the first race was stopped due to a multi-bike fracas in the first corner. Upon restart, polesitter B Rajnikanth took the chequered flag from Vivek M who started from the 13th place on the grid. The final spot on the podium was taken by Prabhu.
Race incidents in the CBR 150R race led to the cancellation of a couple races that have been postponed to the next round. A tightly crammed race schedule will follow at the next round at the much longer MMRT track in Chennai. The second round of the championship has been postponed to August 12-14 from the original date of July 22-24, the track resurfacing being the cause of the postponing.