Coimbatore, 10 June 2017: The girls race in the Rolon round of the MRF MMSC FMSCI Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship lit up an overcast day marked by intermittent showers with Bengaluru’s Aishwarya Pissay of Apex Racing Academy team winning a thrilling battle at the Kari Motor Speedway, here on Saturday.
The day’s programme was truncated due to rains in the evening and two scheduled races will be run on Sunday that will have an early start at 9 am, it was officially announced.
In a very close and thrilling eight-lap race, pole-sitter Aishwarya was off to a bad start and briefly slid to third before recovering to take the lead. However, she got embroiled in a tight battle with Kalyani Potekar (Madhya Pradesh, Speed Up Racing) who nosed ahead in the last lap before committing an error at Turns 3 and 4 where Aishwarya got a jump on her to win the race.
While Kalyani was left to rue her riding errors in the last lap to finish second, Chennai’s Alisha Abdullah (Alisha Abdullah Racing Academy) came in third.
“I had a very bad start. I don’t know what happened but I managed to regain my track position. I had a tough battle with Kalyani and in the last lap, I managed to close the door on her and it gave me just enough breathing space to win the race,” said Aishwarya who later won the TVS girls race, a support event, for a creditable double.
Another impressive winner on the day was Kerala’s Amarnath Menon of Gusto Racing who topped in the Super Sport Indian 300-400cc after front-runner Antony Peter (Kingdom Motorsport) packed up after the first lap.
Finishing second behind Menon, who faced little competition after he took the lead, was his team-mate Arun Muthukrishnan with Vivek Pillai (Rockers Racing) completing the podium.
One of the highlights of Sunday’s programme will be a 40-rider grid in the Stock (up to 165cc, Novice) race. The initial 58 entrants went through a process of qualifying and heats in two batches to make the grid for the race.
The results (Provisional):
National Championship – Super Sport Indian (300-400cc, 10 laps): 1. Amarnath Menon (Gusto Racing) (12mins, 49.080secs); 2. Arun Muthukrishnan (Gusto Racing) (12:56.517); 3. Vivek Pillai (Rockers Racing) (12:57.274).
Stock (Novice, up to 165cc) – Heat 1 (8 laps): 1. Aditya Rao (Sparks Racing) (11:34.049); 3. Satyanarayana Raju (Sparks Racing) (11:38.535); 3. Nithish Kumar N (Sparks Racing) (11:40.161). Heat 2: 1. Akshay VM (Palghat) (11:35.275); 2. Navin A (Salem) (11:40.414); 3. AS Alexander (Chennai) (11:45.644).
GIRLS – (Stock, up to 165cc, 8 laps): 1. Aishwarya Pissay (Bengaluru, Apex Racing Academy) (12:13.213); 2. Kalyani Potekar (Madhya Pradesh, Speed Up Racing) (12:13.467); 3. Alisha Abdullah (Chennai, Alisha Abdullah Racing Academy) (12:15.613).
One-Make Championship – Honda CBR150 (Novice, 8 laps): 1. Satya Narayana (Hyderabad) (14:27.445); 2. Bharath BS (Erode) (14:38.111); 3. Syed Nawas N (Chennai) (14:39.523).
TVS Apache RTR 200 (Novice, 8 laps): 1. Peddu Sriharsha (Chennai) (14:22.692); 2. Shankar Guru (Chennai) (14:28.962); 3. Anup Kumar M (Chennai) (14:42.639).
Support Race – TVS Girls race (8 laps): 1. Aishwarya Pisay (Bengaluru) (12:20.723); 2.Soundari (Chennai) (12:43.922); 3.Kokila Shiva Shankar (Banglaore) (12:59.397).
eom/AP Media Comm. Press Release
