Kyle Kumaran to start P4 for Pre-finals; Ruhaan, Aditya Kamat begin well
Sakhir (Bahrain), 16 Dec 2021: Senior National Rotax Max Indian champion from Peregrine Racing, Kyle Aditya Kumaran, began his campaign at the World Finals on the right note finishing third in the DD2 category here on Thursday. Ruhaan Alva of MSport in Junior class and Aditya Suresh Kamat of Birel Art India in Mini Max are the other two who are flying the Indian flag at the World championship, and they too managed to do well in the heats and qualifiers.
You can watch the finals live here from 7pm IST on Friday starting with the 10-lap Mini Max class. The 11-lap Juniors pre-final A is at 7.48 pm and Pre-final B at 8.01 pm. The 14-lap DD2 live will be from 9.30pm IST (pre-final A) and 9.53pm IST (Pre-final B).
Kumaran, from Trichy, is representing Team India for the first time but the senior champion in India is clubbed in the higher DD2 category. He races with Peregrine in India and with team DOJOMOTO internationally and is managed by Anjum Shaikh. Another Junior champion Ruhaan Alva, also from Bengaluru, is donning the Team India colours again in the Junior section while Rotax Micro Max Indian champion for 2021 Aditya Kamat, also in his maiden Worlds, is pitted against many experienced karters though he is placed in the Mini Max class for the World finals at the famed F1 circuit here. The final race will be on Saturday.
You can watch the finals live on Saturday here.
DD2 Class
Kyle Kumaran who began with a bang coming out in the top-3 in Heat 1 clocking a 52.792sec but faced some issues but still managed to finish fifth in the second heat. Heat 3 did not go as expected but still the talented karter salvaged a P8 despite his best lap of 56.762. Overall he qualified P3 in the combined standings but will start on Row 2 (P4) for the Pre-finals on Friday.
Juniors Class
Meanwhile, Ruhaan Alva found himself up with a talented bunch of youngsters from all over the world but did his best to qualify 25th in his group for an overall 50th place out of 72 drivers in Rotax World Finals junior category. Heat 1 also was a bit tricky on the Sodi chassis he got but without any seat time except the practice sessions, he managed to avoid a couple of crashes in the chaotic run but was bumped and damaged his nose. Thus he was awarded a 5-second penalty for ‘front fairing drop’ following a contact with another driver, and ended up 31st.
Ruhaan fought back in the second heat and went on from 25th to 8th and set the fastest lap of the race. In the 3rd heat, he again dashed from 25th to take a well-deserved 7th. In the Pre-final, he will start from 15th place. Since only a limited number will take the finals, Ruhaan hopes to make the top-10 in the Pre-Finals.
Photo by David Bodapati.
Mini Max
Aditya Suresh Kamat, the Indian National champion in Micro Max, was placed in the Mini Max category as he is too young. The 5th Standard student of Sudarshan Vidya Mandir in Bengaluru, who celebrated his birthday at the start of the Worlds on Dec 11, completed 11 years. The Birel Art India karter, racing a Praga chassis, qualified 29th among 72 best karters in the world clocking a time of 58.575seconds. In Heat 1 he came 24th but recovered to 20th in Heat 2. His best came in Heat 3, as he made up four places clocking 4.328 to finish P11. He will take part in the pre-finals today and of the 72 karters, only half of them will qualify for finals in all the classes.
Grand Finals begin on Dec 11
A lot of our drivers took the opportunity for the early sporting check-in on Friday Dec 10. After the registration at the main entrance for the access to the event, they found their way to the big dome at the Formula 1 area, which is really impressive from in- and outside. Nearly the half of the competitors already were checked-in on Friday and the rest followed on Saturday and then enjoyed their time in the paddock area, checked out the huge drivers tent or had some fun with the rental cars at the track.
As soon as the sun set at 05:00 pm on Saturday, the set up and alignment of the Karts started. And they made an appearance the next day to impress everyone in attendance. This amazing line-up causes goosebumps even on long-term RMC Grand Finals participants and although the worlds are happening for so many years, all at the circuit are truly overwhelmed.
The kart raffle draw took place on Dec 12 and is one of the starting highlights of the RMC Grand Finals, where all drivers will be given equal machinery to compete with, promoting their skills to their very best.
A total of 378 karts provided by the official chassis partners, BirelART, Praga from IPK and SodiKart, were handed out under the Bahrain sun high in the sky, ahead of preparations for the first free practice sessions that get underway on Dec 13 morning.
The raffle for picking up the karts made the show of the happy faces of all the drivers of the seven categories as the shiny new karts sparkled.
