Ashwin Datta hangs on to slender lead

Chennai’s Vishnu Prasad and Joseph Mathew continued to hold sway in the LGB 4 and Suzuki Gixxer categories while 14-year-old Tijil Rao jumped into the spotlight by winning his life’s first race. Aizawl’s Jerome Vanlalrengpuia booked his trip to Spain for the Red Bull Moto GP Rookies Cup qualifiers next month. Jerome posted the fastest timing in the qualifiers over the two rounds of Red Bull Road to Rookies. 

 He finished on 32 points along with PC Andy Lalhmangaihsanga, who clinched Race 2. The Euro JK races had the packed stands on the edge of their seats as Ashwin Datta, Nayan Chatterjee and Karthik Tharani went all out for the top position on the championship leaderboard. Level on 43 points each before the weekend’s final race, Ashwin proved to be the man with nerves of steel. He won the morning race and claimed the second place in the afternoon to take a wafer thin lead of one point, with 50 points.

 Mumbai’s Nayan Chatterjee surged to the second place by amassing 29 points over the weekend. He finished second in Race 3. He began on P10 in Race 4 and moved to the fifth before inching up to the third place. He now has 49 points after his two victories on Day 1. Karthik Tharani is right on their tail with 48 points.  Vishnu (MSport) began with yet another commanding performance in the LGB 4 on Sunday. Starting from P7, thanks to the reverse grid, he quickly made his way past the traffic to clinch Race 2 with 5.9 seconds to spare. He was, however, up against it in Race 3, with teammate Raghul Rangasamy and Rohit Khanna (Dark Don Racing) outmanoeuvring him early on. Vishnu went for the kill in the final lap and dislodged Rohit but couldn’t deny the wily Rangasamy a much-deserved victory.