An exciting and thrilling racing weekend came to an end with title favourite Karminder taking two commanding wins in two races today, making it a perfect day for him. With the stellar performance that he put up on Sunday, he has now strengthened his chances for the Ameo Cup 2017 title.
The second race of the weekend and the first one for the day started in much cooler conditions as compared to yesterday. With reverse grid in play for top eight racers it was Rohit Goyal starting on pole joined by Donovan Vaz on the front row. Jeet Jhabak and Dhruv Mohite started behind them on the second row. Yesterday’s winners Sandeep Kumar, Karminder Pal Singh and Sourav Bandyopadhyay started in sixth, seventh and eight position respectively behind Aditya Pawar who was fifth.
As the lights went off, Donovan, Jeet and Karminder got off to a great start gaining positions going into the first corner of the race. The action continued into the second corner where Karminder starting seventh on the grid made couple of more positions moving past Sandeep and Dhruv. Running wide exiting the last corner, Jeet dropped down allowing Karminder and Dhruv to get past him. Karminder kept attacking Donovan and succeeded in getting into the lead as the latter missed the apex turning into the short loop. Donovan from there on kept loosing speed and kept dropping positions lap after lap giving Jeet the opportunity to overtake exiting the last corner. In the meantime, Dhurv had also lost a couple of positions and was now trailing behind Sandeep. The top four positions remained the same as the racers crossed the finished line.
The second race of the day started under hotter conditions as compared to the morning race in which Sourav started on pole followed by Karminder and Sandeep. Sourav had an extremely good start and led the pack in to the first corner. Karminder stayed right on Sourav’s tail waiting for the right time to make a move. Exiting the last corner of the first lap, Sourav hit a patch of track with some oil spill and lost a bit of pace. This gave Karminder the chance to make a move on Sourav two corners later. Dhruv moved a spot up in the second lap itself and from there on the race leaders remained the same past the chequered flag. Rest of the race turned out to be a rather processional one with hardly any placed being exchanged despite strong competition between the middle ordered drivers.
An ecstatic, Mr. Sirish Vissa, Head of Volkswagen Motorsport India, commented, “The first race of the day was action packed with racers exchanging positions and fighting hard to gain positions. This is what we would like to see – fierce competition with equal race machines at their disposal.” He further added, “Changing weather conditions throughout the weekend made it extremely difficult for all the drivers. However, hats off to all of them – they kept it super competitive, yet extremely clean throughout.”