Achintya Mehrotra hogs limelight for India at AAGC Korea
Bengaluru, 24 Sept 2019: Ace Indian driver Achintya Mehrotra brought laurels to the country winning a podium place in the second round of the Asia Auto Gymkhana Championship hosted at the InjeSpeedium Circuit in South Korea that concluded on the first Sunday of September.
The Delhi-based driver won the bronze in the Solo Knockout competition after qualifying third and also helped Team India to finish fourth in the team events which saw 9 teams take part including the two teams fielded by the host. Team India was represented by Achintya Mehrotra, Sahil Khanna and woman driver Khyati Mody. The other top teams included Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines and all the teams used the official car Kia K3 GT, a 1.6 Turbo GDI, pumping 204 HP with a 275 NM torque and a 7-Speed DCT.
On August 30, the first day of the event started off with the scrutiny and usual administration checks and issuing the driver ID cards while the Driver Briefing was on Aug 31 at the InjeSpeedium Classic Car Museum auditorium. The competitors also got the start order and the competition track patterns.
There were a total of 4 track patterns:
- Pattern A – Solo Qualifying
- Pattern B – Solo Knockout
- Pattern C – Double Qualifying & Knockouts
- Pattern D – Team Knockouts
The event used twin tracks. Solo qualifying had the drivers drive on both lanes (A & B). The best of both times decided the qualifying order.
This year saw the most competitive battle with the top 5 drivers within 0.1s. Achintya Mehrotra from Team India qualified in 3rd place with Sahil Khanna in 14th place &KhyatiMody in 22nd place out of 27 drivers from all the 9 teams. The cumulative of qualifying times of the 3 drivers served as the overall qualifying time for teams. Thus Team India qualified overall 2nd out of 8 countries.
The next session was the Double qualifying wherein two drivers go behind each other. The time starts when the first driver cuts the beam at the start while the time stops when the driver behind cuts the beam at finish. The drivers change positions at the last corner just before the finish. Team India qualified in last position owing to a wrong penalty being given by the marshal. In the double knockouts, India went head to head against Philippines to which they lost.
The final day of the event – 1st September started off with the Solo Knockouts. Sahil Khanna was lined up against Taiwan’s driver to whom he lost owing to course deviation &so did KhyatiMody who was lined up against the Singapore driver Jeremy Low.
Meanwhile, Achintya Mehrotra beat the Philippines driver to advance into the next round of knockouts. The next round of solo knockouts had Achintya lined up against Korea’s lady driver whom he won against as the Korean driver got a 2 min course deviation penalty.
The next knockout was up against driver of Team Thailand who was unlucky against Team India driver Achintya.
Finally, Achintya was lined up against Team Taiwan driver who proved to be faster than him. Eventually, Achintya came 3rd for Team India in the solo knockouts.
The final session was the Team event wherein driver 1, driver 2; driver 3 of Team A goes head to head with driver 1, driver 2 ; driver 3 of Team B. On every win, each team is awarded with 2 points. The first team to get 4 points advances to the next round of knockouts.
India was lined up against Singapore whom they beat in all the 3 rounds and advanced into the top 4 shootout. The next team was Team Thailand who beat us by 4 points to 2 points.
Our final race of the day was against Team Taiwan for the 3rd place position in the Team round. However, that also didn’t as planned & Team India had to settle for 4th Place.
Final results : –
Solo Qualifying – Achintya Mehrotra (P3)
Solo Knockouts – Achintya Mehrotra (P3)
Team Result – Team India (P4)
