Krishnaraj, Ananth earn hard fought victories in JK Racing

Kolhapur's Krishnaraj Mahadik and Bengaluru's Ananth Shanmugam earned hard fought wins to bring up their first victories of the season in the JK Racing India Series at the 2.1 km Kari Motor Speedway here on Sunday.

Later in the support races of the JK Tyre Racing Championship, Chennai's Ajay Kini completed a hat-trick of wins this weekend by clinching victory in the lone Formula LGB 4 race on Sunday, adding to the two he won on Saturday.

In Volkswagen Vento Cup, New Delhi's Karminder Singh won the race in 18 minutes and 58.061 seconds.

In the first race of the day, Krishnaraj, who finished second on Saturday, earned his first win of the season by beating rival Vishnu Prasad of Chennai to second.

Bengaluru's Akhil Rabindra earned a creditable third after fighting all the way down from eighth in the 15-lap race comprising of the FB02 cars powered by the 1.2 litre BMW bike engines giving 140 bhp.

Pole man Krishnaraj did not have a good start as he was overtaken by Saturday's winner Vishnu right at the start. However, he notched up the fastest lap of the race (1:4.85) to take back the lead on the third lap.

Krishnaraj did not commit any more errors and kept Vishnu behind him to take the chequered flag in 20:28.413.

In the middle, Kolhapur's Dhruv Mohite spun out on Turn 1 of Lap 8 to bring out the safety car for three laps, which helped Akhil take the last podium spot.

In the second race of the FB02 series, Ananth did well to hold off a fiery charge from Vishnu and take his first victory of the championship. Despite starting fifth Vishnu, who has two triumphs this season, also went into the lead for some time.

But Ananth fought back in a topsy-turvy turn of events to claim the top step of the podium. Karthik Tharani from Chennai, who started seventh, took the last step of the podium.

Having a poor weekend, Dhruv once again failed to finish the race, being the only racer to go out on Lap 9.

Later, Dark Don Racing's Ajay completed a hat-trick as he won his third Formula LGB 4 race of the weekend. Having won the first two races on Saturday, he completed a clean sweep of titles in the formula race which uses a 1300cc Suzuki Swift engine with an Esteem five-speed gearbox.

Meco Racing's Raghul Rangasamy finished second, 0.299 seconds behind Ajay while Avalanche team's Diljith T.S. finished the 15-lap race in third.

As many as eight drivers failed to finish in the 21-man grid.

In the Volkswagen Vento Cup, New Delhi's Karminder Singh won the race 4.8 seconds ahead of Hyderabad's Ishaan Dodhiwala, who was second ahead of Saturday's winner Anindith Reddy Konda.

Amit Mete, Amit Patil and Rajeev Srivastava failed to finish the race.

--Indo-Asian New Service

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