Ashwin, Saran share honours at National Racing

Chennai - Young guns and fierce rivals Ashwin Sundar (Dark Don Racing) and Saran Vikram (Mars Racing) shared the honours in the LGB Formula 4 class at the fourth round of the 15th JK Tyre FMSCI National Racing Championship here Saturday.

Sundar, starting from pole, won the first race quite comfortably while holding off Saran Vikram who ran out an easy winner in the second outing from a reverse grid formation.

Sundar barely placed a wheel wrong as he opened up a sizeable lead early in the 10-lap race and maintained a consistent pace to emerge worthy winner while Vishnu Prasad (Meco Racing) made two places to finish third behind Saran Vikram.

In the second race, Vikram, starting from third position, was quick off-the-blocks to take the lead by the first corner and then saw off a strong challenge from Sundar whose car suffered from gearbox problems forcing him to settle for second place.

Coming in third was the seasoned Sarosh Hataria (Dark Don Racing) who made up for his poor sixth place finish in the first race.

“I had problems with the third gear and I drove with one hand on the steering and another on the gear lever. On the third lap, Saran and I had a contact, I went went off and rejoined in fourth, but managed to move up to finish second,” said Sundar.

In the Super Saloon race, Arjun Balu was in a different league with another stunning performance that saw him win from pole position without once being threatened.

Even the safety car lap that bunched up the cars did not stop him from winning by the proverbial country mile for his third success this season.

While Balu won as he pleased, behind him veteran Narayanaswamy Leelakrishnan (Big Foots Racing) and Siddharth Kishore (Performance Racing) had to work hard for their second and third place finishes in the incident-filled race.

There were as many as eight retirements, including that of championship leader Vijaykumar Rajvirdhan (Performance Racing) and a couple of shunts.

Young Feroze Khan emulated Balu with a start-to-finish win in the Indian Junior Touring Cars race that witnessed some close racing up and down the grid.

Feroze, however, kept his head down and sustained a good pace to notch his second win of the season while championship leader Fahad Kutty (Team Game Over) retired after six laps due to mechanical problems.

Equally impressive was S Sreeram of Mega Racing who started fifth, but carved his way through the field to finish a creditable third behind Diljith Shaji (Eram Group) who gained a place.

Meanwhile, veteran Ameya Walavalkar qualified for pole position in the Volkswagen Polo R Cup, ahead of Avdumber Hede and Rahil Noorani.

The results:

LGB Formula 4 (Race 1, 10 laps): 1 Ashwin Sundar (Dark Don Racing) (19 mins, 58.864 secs); 2 Saran Vikram (Mars Racing) (19:59.927); 3 Vishnu Prasad (Meco Racing) (20:05.685).

Race 2 (10 laps): 1 Saran Vikram (20:00251); 2 Ashwin Sundar (20:02.254); 3 Sarosh Hataria (Dark Don Racing) (20:05.901).

Indian Touring Cars (Super Saloon) 10 laps: 1 Arjun Balu (Tiger Sport) (20:52.933); 2 N Leelakrishnan (Big Foots Racing) (20:55.878); 3 Siddharth Kishore (Performance Racing) (20:58.284).

Indian Junior Touring Cars (9 laps): 1 Feroze Khan (19:47.046); 2 Diljith Shaji (Eram Group Sports Club) (20:00.026); 3 S Sreeram (Mega Racing) (20:00.278).