National Car Racing C'ship: Chirag Ghorpade, Arjun Balu cruise to victory

Chennai, December 11: Teenagers, spearheaded by Bengaluru schoolboy Chirag Ghorpade, took the honours in the MRF F1600 race in the second round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Car Racing Championship at the Madras Motor Race Track (MMRT), here on Saturday.

Chirag held off another 17-year old, Agra's Shahan Ali Mohsin, for his maiden win in this category while Rishon Rajiv, 16, also from Bengaluru, finished third in the eight-lap race. The trio was in a league of its own in a field that had quite a few experienced drivers.

"It was a tough race initially when Shahan caught up with me, but I realized that he was unable to narrow the gap any further and I managed to dictate the pace," said Chirag, who had earlier qualified for pole position.

Meanwhile, Coimbatore veteran, defending champion Arjun Balu (Race Concepts), at 47, and in his 29th racing season, was in an imperious form easily winning the premier Indian Touring Cars race from pole position, while two Rayo Racing drivers from Hyderabad, Anindith Reddy and Jeet Jhabakh finished a distant second and third, respectively.

"Honestly, I was quite surprised by the pace of the car (Honda City), and by the end of the first lap, I was comfortably ahead. Thereafter, I decided to back off a bit and scaled-down on my aggression. Yes, I am quite pleased with the performance," Balu was quoted as saying by the organisers in a press release on Saturday.

Performance Racing's Deepak Ravikumar from Chennai and'Bengaluru's Varun Anekar (Race Concepts) topped in the Super Stock and Indian Junior Touring Cars category, respectively.

Pole-sitter Viswas Vijayaraj (DTS Racing) from Vellore emerged a facile winner in the Formula LGB 1300 race that was marred by a red flag stoppage following a series of crashes, reducing it to just five laps.

Mumbai's Fahad Kutty (Red Line Racing) and Coimbatore's A Balaprasath (Quest Motorsport) shared the top honours in the two MRF Saloon Cars (Toyota Etios) races.

The results (Provisional - all 8 laps unless mentioned):

MRF F1600 (Race-1): 1. Chirag Ghorpade (Bengaluru) (13mins, 32.919secs); 2. Shahan Ali Mohsin (Agra) (13:34.252); 3. Rishon Rajiv (Bengaluru) (13:35.164).

Indian Touring Cars (Race-1): 1. Arjun Balu (Race Concepts, Coimbatore) (15:19.312); 2. Anindith Reddy (Rayo Racing, Hyderabad) (15:46.386); 3. Jeet Jhabakh (Rayo Racing, Hyderabad) (15:54.693).

Super Stock (Race-1): 1. Deepak Ravikumar (Performance Racing, Chennai) (16:09.974); 2. Rithvik Thomas (Race Concepts, Bengaluru) (16:12.079); 3. RP Raja Rajan (Performance Racing, Chennai) (16:17.578).

Indian Junior Touring Cars (Race-1): 1. Varun Anekar (Race Concepts, Bengaluru) (16:04.162); 2. Charen Chandran (Pvt, Coimbatore) (16:25.674); 3. Hatim Shabbir Jamnagarwala (Performance Racing, Chennai) (15:30.132, 7 laps)

Formula LGB 1300 (Race-1, 5 laps): 1. Viswas Vijayaraj (DTS Racing, Nellore) (11:14.406); 2. Arya Singh (DTS Racing, Kolkata) (11:15.966); 3. Deepak Ravikumar (Momentum Motorsport, Chennai) (11:20.775).

MRF Saloon Cars (Toyota Etios - Race 1): 1. Fahad Kutty (Red Line Racing, Mumbai) (17:08.849); 2. Jamie Shaw (Red Line Racing, Mumbai) (17:09.332); 3. Chandresh Tolia (Red Line Racing, Mumbai) (17:11.833). Race-2 (10 laps): 1. A Balaprasath (Quest Motorsport, Coimbatore) (21:17.190); 2. Justin Singh (Quest Motorsport, Haryana) (21:17.925); 3. Fahad Kutty (Red Line Racing, Mumbai) (21:20.784).