Sonawane and Junaid sweep the inaugural round

Sonawane set the fastest lap of the round of 1:24.681

The inaugural event of the Levitas cup had Sonawane and Aadam Junaid both claiming a double in their respective class, at Round 1 of the CTR - JK Tyre FMSCI Indian National Car Racing Championship 2026.

The one-make Maruti Suzuki IGNIS had 14 car grid, 10 from the Professional class and 4 from Rookie category. The action packed Levitas Cup began its journey at Kari Speedway, was almost a neat race and incident free.

In the Professional class, Sonawane also started from pole, with 1:25.023, ahead of Sidharath Balasundram on 1:25.544 and Ashwin Pugalagiri  on 1:25.573.

In the Rookie category, Aadam Junaid, from Sri Lanka, took pole with a lap of 1:25.926 and converted it into two wins, scoring the maximum 20 points. Vikram AB qualified second and Shreyans Mittal third.

Pole Sitter Pratik Sonawane was fast enough to lead right from start of first corner of Race1 and there on he had to never lookback, he began extending his lead lap after lap and sixth lap onwards he was on his own, since the contact between two cars battling out for second position.

Siddharth held on to his ground in spite of Vinith Kumar repeatedly trying to go past him couple of times and from the second lap onwards Ashwin joined the three way battle for second position, which went on till lap six, Vinith and Ashwin on a right hander before the final corner came in contact and Vinit managed to continue, but Ashwin had to head to pits as the bumper had completely peeled off and under his front wheels.

This crash gave way to Mira Erda and Aadam to fill the third and fourth position from seventh lap onwards, with winner Pratik Sonawane and first runner-up Sidharth Balasundram already had extneded their lead. Mira and Aadam were running neck to neck till the Penultimate lap, in the final lap Mira Erda extended her lead to complete the podium.

Srilankan Aadam Junaid though missed the podium, was the leader of the Rookie category and he had his next placement three positions behind, Ajay Shankar who was running in eighth position in the combined grid finished second, Vikram AB finished a close third.

Race2 had the finishers of race one orderly linedup on the Grid, Sonawane once again got off to a good start and extended his lead from second corner onwards till the finish. Battle for second position was intensifying  between four of them, Sidharth, Mira, Ashwin and Aadam. In the very first lap Ashwin managed to go past Aadam and was running in fourth position. But Aadam was never letting things go, he tried to get back his position till the end of the sixth lap and further on Ashwin built a lead and was  on Mira's neck and this continued for one more lap and in the finish of eighth lap Mira took the outer line, Ashwin took the inner line by the approach of the first corner and moved ahead. For the remaining two laps Aadam was fighting it out with Mira for fourth position and was unsuccesful and finished fifth behind Mira. Pratik Sonawane won the class comfortably followed by Sidharth Balasundram in second and Vinith Kumar finished third.

After starting fourth on the common grid, Rookie Aadam once again had no one behind him, the next competitor was four places behind on the grid as well.   Ajay Shankar was running in second till the final lap had to settle for third as Mittal who was two placings behind Ajay managed to go past him to settle for second position.

After Round 1:

In the Professional class, Sonawane leads on 20 points, followed by Balasundram on 16, with Erda and Kumar level on 11 and Balaji Raju on 6.

Junaid leads the Rookie standings on 20 points, ahead of Shankar on 14, Mittal on 13 and Vikram AB on 11.