Day of doubles at JK Tyre national racing

CHENNAI - In extremely hot and humid conditions, Ashwin Sundar of Team Speed-NK Racing yet again underlined his superior pace and skills by achieving a double in the Formula Rolon-Chevrolet class in the fifth round of the JK Tyre National Racing Championship, here Sunday.

Ashwin, the 20-year old from Chennai who had cut his racing teeth as a 13-year old driving a Maruti Esteem car in the Saloon car races at the MMRT track here, was in a league of his own from start to finish to replicate his commanding win in the first race Saturday night.

That Ashwin was class apart from the rest was very apparent as he attacked the corners with confidence and his car had the straight line speed to run away from the field. His experience in the German championship has obviously made him a far better racing driver and the rest struggled to keep pace with him.

Much of the action came further down the field where Sarosh Hataria and Saran Vikram were involved in wheel-to-wheel battle for the third spot behind Ashwin and Gaurav Dalal. After exchanging positions over the first couple of laps, Hataria settled in front of Vikram and defended well to come in third.

Elsewhere, Ajay Kini of Wallace Sports also completed a double in the Formula LGB Swift class with yet another fine run. However, as in the first race, Sunday’s outing had its share of complaints following an incident at the start involving Gautam Parekh (Wallace Sports) and TVS Girlings Sudarshana Rao, the championship leader.

Rao complained against Parekh for impeding him at the start, but the Stewards dismissed it as a “racing incident” and allowed the positions to stand. The decision, understandably, raised some hackles in the TVS Girling team, whose driver, Narendran was docked a 30-second penalty following a similar incident and lost his third place finish to Prithveen Rajan of Wallace Sports.

“You cannot have different interpretations of similar incidents and our team lost a second place finish at a time when we are looking at winning the drivers championship,” said TVS Girling team official Vivekanandan.

The tale of “double” continued in the other two classes, the Super Bikes, where Rohit Giri from Bangalore swept the honours (Experts category) as did veteran B Vijay Kumar of Prime Racing in the Super Saloons, both dominating from start to finish.

Sunday’s results:

Formula Rolon Chevrolet (10 laps) — Race 2: 1. Ashwin Sundar (Speed-NK Racing) 18:58:300; 2. Gaurav Dalal (Red Rooster Racing) 19:08:622; 3. Sarosh Hataria (Aamaron Pro Racing) 19:12:139.

Formula LGB Swift (10 laps) Race 2: 1. Ajay Kini (Wallace Sports) 19:57:457; 2. Goutham Parekh (Wallace Sports) 20:05:791; 3. Sudarshana Rao (TVS Girling) 20:06:756.

Super Saloons (10 laps) Race 2: 1. B. Vijaya Kumar (Prime Racing) 20:56:596; 2. Akbar Ebrahim (Prime Racing) 20:59:240; 3. C.Rajaram (Prime Racing) 21:06:571.

Super Bikes 600 cc (Experts, 8 laps): Race 2: 1. Rohit Giri (Bangalore) 15:05:612; 2. S.Vivek Pillai (Chennai) 15:19:621; 3. Gopinandhan (Bangalore) 16:32:585.

Novice (8 laps): Race 2 — 1. T.Sumit Lucas (Ranchi) 15:57:632; 2. K.V.Balaji (Bangalore) 16:13:819; 3. Alisha Abdullah (Chennai) 16:56:196.

Super Bikes 1000 cc (8 laps): Race 2 — 1. V.Vikram (Bangalore) 15:30:964; 2. Alok Sashidhar (Bangalore) 15:40:394; 3. Sanjay Kumar (Bangalore) 16:23:325.