Double for Fahad Kutty at National Racing

Coimbatore - Mumbai‘s Fahad Kutty of Team Game Over completed a splendid double in the Indian Junior Touring Cars class at the 15th JK Tyre-FMSCI National Racing Championship here Sunday.

Kutty, thus, more than made up for a disappointing first round when he was excluded from the results due to a technical infringement, but had to stave off strong challenge from former two-wheeler racer Emmanuel Clarke (Moto-Rev India) and Feroze Khan who came in second and third, respectively.

In the showcase event of Indian Touring Cars, last year’s champion Vijaykumar Rajvirdhan (Prime Racing) took the honours from veteran Radha Selvarajan (RAD Racing) and team-mate D. Vidyaprakash in a rip-roaring race marked by much jostling and shunting.

In the process, winner of Saturday’s first race Arjun Balu (Tiger Sport) was taken out when running second following a contact with Selvarajan while eight other cars also packed up due to collisions and mechanical failure.

The two Volkswagen Polo R Cup races dished out plenty of action and edge-of-the seat thrills. Veteran Ameya Walavalkar won the first race that was truncated to eight laps following two red-flag stoppages, and Goa’s Donovan Vaz recorded his maiden podium and win in the second.

Walavaklar from Mumbai, a former Karting champion, kept his cool unmindful of the chaos that unfolded behind him to win sparing nearly eight seconds to Rahil Noorani with Mihir Dharkar completing the podium in third place.

In contrast, Vaz built on an early lead to hold off Sandeep Kumar and Walavalkar in a race that for a change was virtually incident free allowing the cars to complete the scheduled 15 laps.

“An awesome feeling; I had a horrible qualifying session finishing 15th. The first race did not go too well as I finished eighth, but in the second, I had a good start and made up for the earlier disappointments,” said Vaz.

The results:

LGB Formula 4 (11 laps): Sudarshan Rao (Rayo Racing) 1 (15mins, 32.326secs); Vishnu Prasad (Meco Racing) 2 (15:38.815); Sarosh Hataria (WSRF with Tiger Sport) 3 (15:39.668).

Indian Touring Cars (15 laps): Vijaykumar Rajvirdhan (Prime Racing) 1 (18:56.498); Radha Selvarajan (RAD Racing) 2 (19:10.091); D. Vidyaprakash (Prime Racing) 3 (19:17.587).

Indian Junior Touring Cars (15 laps): Fahad Kutty (Game Over) 1 (20:20.666); Emmanuel Clarke (Moto-Rev India) 2 (20:21.941); S Feroze Khan 3 (20:29.105).

Volkswagen Polo R Cup (Race 1) 8 laps: Ameya Walavalkar 1 (10:34.617); Rahil Noorani 2 (10:42.063); Mihir Dharkar 3 (10:52.944). Race 2 (15 laps): Donovan Vaz 1 (19:31.146); A Sandeep Kumar 2 (19:32.931); Ameya Walavalkar 3 (19:33.160).