Harpal Singh Bedi
Hyderabad, 20 November; Amid high drama, Raghul Rangasamy (MSport) and Sandeep Kumar (Dark Don Racing) quickly dispensed with pole sitter, Tijil Rao and fought tooth and nail for the first three laps before the red flag was brought out due to the failure of championship leader, Ashwin Dutta’s car. at the LGB Formula 4 of the 25th JK Tyre-FMSCI National Racing Championship at the Hyderabad Street Circuit on Sunday
The restart didn’t last long either with Mira Erda crashing and bringing out the red flag again. In the second restart, Saran Vikram Tmars (Mars Racing) made the most of it, pulling into the lead. With 8 laps to go, another retirement brought out the yellow flags, followed by the Safety Car. The organisers then decided to bring out the red flag again. So it was back to the grid for the cars remaining in the race for the last three laps.
Saran got off to a good start. Coming into the most crucial right hander at this track, he made a little mistake and slid away from the apex. Raghul seized the opportunity and the lead. By the end of the lap, Vishwas Vijayaraj slipped past into the lead and Saran got back ahead of Raghul. In a scintillating fight to the finish line, Vishwas held off the challenge by closely placed Saran and Raghul, taking his Ahura Racing car to the top spot. However, Viswas was unfortunately relegated to 2nd following a post-race penalty, which saw
Raghul Rangasamy awarded the win for Race 1. Saran Vikram Tmars was disqualified by the stewards post-race, promoting Diljith TS to 3rd to complete the Race 1 podium.
Race 2 turned out to be almost similar to the first one, with red flags and restarts galore. The shining stars didn’t change much either. Saran had tremendous drive from his really well-prepared cracker of a car, only to make small errors which Raghul Rangasamy capitalized on, annexing another podium and in fact stepping up to the top.
Followed closely by Saran Vikram in second place and Ashwin Dutta who inherited third place from Vishwas Vijayaraj (Ahura Racing) after he spun all on his own, extricating himself from what was a superb 3-way fight for the win.
The third and final race of the day kept the excitement of the day alive with some close overtaking. While Viswas Vijayaraj and Raghul Rangasamy continued to make it to the podium on first and second place respectively, it was Arya Singh from Dark Don Racing who sprung into the top three lead taking the third place.
With an action packed weekend over now, the competing stacks at the championship has definitely gone down to the wire and the season finale scheduled in December in Coimbatore will be nothing short of intense races on the known turf of Kari Motor Speedway.