JK Tyre-backed Ruhaan Alva grabs a superb 2nd: GB4 Championship
Silverstone, 9 May 2023: Indian Racing starRuhaan Alva grabbed his maiden podium in the GB4 single-seater championship last weekend with a second-place finish in the final race of the series’ second round at England’s iconic Silverstone race circuit.
The 16-year-old from Bengaluru, backed by the JK Tyre scholarship programme, crossed the line less than a second behind winner Harri Reynolds and Tom Mills finished third.
Ruhaan Alva, who drives for Fortec Motorsports team, took his rostrum result in the third race of the weekend. Starting from pole in the reverse grid race, he had a contact with Sid Smith, which robbed him of the momentum, and gave Reynolds a sniff at the lead.
The Bengaluru teenager defended robustly against Reynolds, going wheel-to-wheel with the Elite Motorsport racer, through the high-speed Maggots and Becketts complex of corners. But the young Indian ultimately had to concede as Reynolds swept past at Vale.
Ruhaan didn’t get a chance to make the place back as the safety car was deployed to clear away Sid Smith’s car, which had suffered a puncture from the start-line contact with Ruhaan and was left stranded at Copse. Thomas Lee had also spun off in his Evans GP car at Abbey.
The safety car came in, once the time limit on the race had run out. With no overtaking allowed, Reynolds went clear of the field and cruised to the flag followed by Ruhaan.
Ruhaan Alva said, “It’s really nice to be here. The qualifying didn’t go as planned and I had to settle for P11. I got caught up in traffic. Later, the rain and resultant spray resulted in a lot of lost time. My first podium of the season is a really good boost to my confidence and we know that if we keep working hard, we will be able to achieve consistent results.”
“Ideally it would have been P1 but Harri passed me and I just had to stick with him and hope that no one else caught me and started fighting me so then I could get a gap behind.
“Obviously I’d like to thank the big sponsors who helped me get here, my Dad, and it’s really great thing being an Indian driver being able to get podiums outside of India now,” Ruhaan concluded.
The GB4 Championship is an entry-level, one-make single seater championship aimed at giving young racers their first taste of slicks-and-wings machinery. Launched in September 2021, the series is currently in its second season and uses Tatuus F4-T014 cars, which are also raced in Italian, ADAC and Spanish F4 series.
About JK Tyre Motorsport
JK Tyre has been closely associated with the world of motorsports for almost three decades. The company laid down a long-term plan to popularize and promote the sport in the country. Its first target was to change the notion that this was a sport for the elite. So, it packaged and redesigned it in a spectator-friendly way, drawing the masses to the sport. JK Tyre’s efforts started paying dividends in just a few years’ time, with the likes of Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandok going all the way to the F1 rung, the highest level of single-seat racing in the world. Since then, a number of stars emerged, including Armaan Ebrahim, the Maini brothers (Kush and Arjun), Anindith Reddy Konda, amongst many others. JK Tyre Motorsports is very proud of the role it has played in bringing women into motorsports in a big way. Apart from encouraging them to get into the sport through karting as kids, the company also gave them opportunities in various national championships. With a vision to promote women in motorsports, the company has curated women-centric events such as JK Tyre WIAA Women’s Rally to Valley, JK Tyre Defence Wives Power Drive, JK Tyre-YFLO Women’s Power Drive, JK Tyre Times Women’s Drive apart from introducing an all-women’s team in the JK Tyre National Racing Championship to encourage women to take up to the sport.
