Rolon honours for Saran Vikram

CHENNAI - Young Saran Vikram of Mars Racing consolidated his position at the top of the leaderboard in the Formula Rolon class by chalking up his fourth win of the series in the penultimate round of the 13th JK Tyre National Racing Championship here Saturday.

With the expected rains holding off, barring an occasional light drizzle, the conditions were just about perfect for racing and Vikram underlined his dominance with a start-to-finish performance as he spared over two seconds to Chitesh Mandody (Mohites Racing) at the finish.

The victory took Vikrams tally to 43 while his nearest championship rival Sarosh Hataria (Meco Racing) who has 29 points, retired due to technical problems while Mandody jumped to second spot from fourth with 34.

Meanwhile, championship leader in both Super Saloons and Polo Cup classes, Sailesh Bolisetti of Visakhapatnam, barely survived a wretched day to drop vital points.

The 21-year old from RAD Racing team finished fifth in the Super Saloons that fetched him a mere three points that took his tally to 71 as against Siddharth Kishore (Performance Racing) who moved to 53 following a second place finish behind Raj Viruthan (Prime Racing) in an incident-packed race.

Veteran C. Rajaram (Prime Racing) came in third, but behind the top three there was considerable jostling and shunting that however did not impact the final outcome.

Bolisetti could qualify only fifth on the grid in the Polo Cup and will have to extend himself on the morrow when the race would be run.

In the Formula LGB Swift class, the seasoned Ameya Walavalkar (TVS Girling) picked up 10 points from his third win of the championship to stay in contention for the title.

However, Walavalkar still has much to do as he is on 53, 16 behind leader Ajay Kini (Wallace Sports) who was second in the race, ahead of team-mate Gautam Parekh (50) who slipped to third position in the championship standings.

The results:

Super Saloon (Race 1): Raj Viruthan (Prime Racing) 1 (20mins, 40.323 secs); Siddharth Kishore (Performance Racing) 2 (20:40.465); C Rajaram (Prime Racing) 3 (21:09.987).

Formula LGB Swift (Race 1): Ameya Walavalkar (TVS Girling) 1 (19:48.430); Ajay Kini (Wallace Sports) 2 (19:49.308); Gautam Parekh (Wallace Sports) 3 (19:50.034).

Formula Rolon (Race 1): Saran Vikram (Mars Racing) (18:54.500) 1 ; Chittesh Mandoy (Mohites Racing) 2 (18:56.522); G Vikas Anand (VAD-RAD Racing) 3 (19:17.354).