Jinkawa claims fourth victory

Japanese driver Yudai Jinkawa clinched his fourth victory of the season when he took the chequered flag ahead of Vikash Anand and Tarun Reddy in the MRF 1600 race of the National Racing Championship on Saturday.

It was an exciting finish to the race as the top three drivers were separated by just three tenths off a second at the finish line at the Buddh International Circuit. In the Indian Touring Car category, N Leelakrishnan held off reigning champion Arjun Balu to win by 3.03 seconds from pole position while Ananth Pitawala claimed his first ever win in the Indian Junior Touring Car category.

In the Toyota EMR Trophy, Diljith won race one from pole position, while youngster Akhil Rabindra won race two.

Diljith was elated to have driven on an F1 track for the first time in his career.
In the MRF 1600, Yudai, starting on pole, had a great start and went into the lead with Tarun and Vikash right behind him.

Tarun and Vikash had a tussle before the latter finally got past Tarun in the mid-sector.
Vikash then started to reel Yudai in bringing Tarun with him and was right on his tail with three laps to go.

Tarun was later given a penalty for jumping the start and ended up in 5th place with Advait Deodhar moving up to the final podium spot.

In the FMSCI-MMSC Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship India’s top two riders Sarath Kumar and K Rajini went wheel-for-wheel in the Honda CBR 250 category.

Rajini got past Sarath on the final corner of the final lap to take the win by 0.0157 seconds.

In the first race of the day, Mathana Kumar took the honours in the TVS-Apache RTR180 category. He was followed by Ananth P Raj, who finished 5.898 seconds behind. Arvind Ganesh came out in front to take third spot.

The second race, the Yamaha-Y2F R15, provided some great action with Shyam Sha­nkar edging Vivek Pillai to come home 0.08 seconds earlier. In the last race of the day K Jagan took a victory ahead of Harry Sylvester and Deepak in the NRC Experts 165cc race category.