Chennai, July 23: Chennai’s Deepak Ravikumar dominated the first round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Car Racing Championship 2023 at the Madras International Circuit with three wins and two podium finishes in six races as he led a Team Performance Racing sweep in both Indian Junior Touring Cars and Formula LGB 1300 categories. It was a Triple delight for Diljith, Angad Matharoo as Arjun Balu scores double in ITC class.
IJTC:
The three front-runners, taking part in the Indian Junior Touring Cars category, went on to deliver a podium sweep for Team Performance Racing with Ravikumar finishing well ahead of Prasad and Teja.
Ravikumar, who celebrated his 36th birthday on July 20, shuttled between the two categories barely without a pause to underline his supreme fitness and adaptability to conditions that turned wet on Sunday which saw persistent light drizzle. He reserved his best for the three Touring Cars races that had a combined 17-car grid comprising three categories, the Indian Touring Cars, IJTC and Super Stock, winning two races and notching a second-place finish behind team-mate Akkineni Anand Prasad in Race 3. Pole Sitter Deepak Ravikumar from Chennai won the Race 1 with just below half seconds over Akkineni Anand Prasad also from Chennai, as the third Chennai driver Srinivas Teja with a further less than a second difference finished third. Race 2, wholly belonged to Team Performance Racing drivers, it was Deepak in front and Akkineni finished second and Hatim Shabbir Jamnagarwala also from Chennai finished third. Akkineni managed to win the third race as Deepak with less than a second difference finished behind him in second and Srinivas Teja managed to complete the podium for the second time.
Formula LGB 1300:
Day One: Race 1, Rao, 20, a Business Management student, made up for a retirement in Race 1 that Raghul Rangasamy from Chennai representing MSport, pole-sitter Viswas Vijayaraj and Deepak Ravikumar forged ahead after the initial jostle through first of the eight laps. Viswas was harried by Ravikumar through much of the six laps, including a brief Safety Car period until the two made contact in the closing stages. Ravikumar dropped to ninth where he finished while Raghul passed Viswas who was nursing a damaged camber strut following the incident, to take the lead and eventually win the race. Finishing third behind Viswas was Bengaluru’s Chetan Surineni (MSport) who had started from P6.
“Unfortunately, I was involved in an incident in the first race and so, had to make up for that in the next race. It was fun as I managed to overtake all the 13 cars in front of me and win. I should have more such performances,” said Tijil after finishing ahead of Deepak Ravikumar (Chennai, Ahura Racing) and last year’s champion Viswas Vijayaraj (Nellore, DTS Racing) who started from P11 on the reverse grid.
Bengaluru’s Tijil Rao from Momentum Motorsports came up with a stunning drive to win Race-2 after starting from P14 on the opening day, Deepak from Ahura Racing finished second with over 12sec difference, as Viswas finished third.
Race 3, Ravikumar won quite comfortably after front-runners, Viswas Vijayaraj, the 2022 champion in this category, and yesterday’s Race-2 winner Tijil Rao knocked each other out half-way through the eight-lapper when battling for the lead.
ITC:
Day One: much of the attention was in this race. Driving an under-powered stock car since his regular Honda City in ITC-trim was not ready for the race weekend, Balu quickly dropped to fourth overall after starting from pole position in the combined grid. Showing good pace, Ravikumar did not take long to get a jump on Balu early in the eight-lap race. So did two others, Akkineni Anand Prasad and Srinivas Teja. Behind the foursome, there were close battles up and down the grid. Balu’s team-mates Gurunath Meiyappan and Diana Pundole were locked in a tight tussle before the former finished second ahead of the Pune driver in race1, thus giving a top three finish for Race Concepts.
Day two: Meanwhile, last year’s champion Arjun Balu from Coimbatore, who won yesterday’s Race-1, completed a double with team-mate Gurunath Meiyappan winning the other race.
Gurunath Meiyappan won the second race over Balu with less than a second difference, Rithvik Thomas from Bengaluru finished third. Balu won the final race of the class as Rithvik finished second and Meiyappan settled for third.
Super Stock:
It was a clean sweep of all the three races for Pole sitter Dilijth from Thrissur representing DTS Racing claimed the honours ahead of local challenger Jarshan Anand from DB Motorsports with a difference of over .300th of a second and Delhi’s Justin Singh from Redline Racing was slower by a second to secure third position. He also won the second race with a comfortable margin of over 12sec on Yokeswaran from Coimbatore representing Momentum Motorsports, while Jarshan Anand from Chennai, DB Motorsports finished third. Diljith continued his dominance in the final race of the weekend as well with a huge gap of 21sec over Justin Singh from Delhi representing Redline Racing as Yokeswaran finished third.
MRF Saloons (Toyota Etios):
Achieving a triple for the weekend was experienced racer and being the fastest in qualifying Angad Matharoo from Chennai who authored a lights-to-flag win had to never look back, he was the topper in both the races Zahan Commissariat from Mumbai with below .300th of a second finished behind him in second position in Race 1, as Jaiprashant Venkat from Coimbatore finished third with over 8sec difference. In Race 2, Angad topped with a lead of over 37sec over the second finisher Anirudha Arvind from Chennai as Venkat for the second time completed the podium.