Motorsports: Thrilling win for Krishnan Rajini

Veteran Krishnan Rajini held off Deepak Ravikumar after a terrific battle in the 165cc Group C category in the final round of the FMSCI Indian National Motorcycle Championship here Saturday.

Both Rajini and Deepak started well and were side by side for most of the race, but Rajini managed to pull ahead on the final lap. Jagan Kumar settled for the third place after holding off Dinesh Kumar.

In the Group D 165cc Novice class, Akash Dingare comfortably won ahead of championship leader Meka Vidhuraj while G.A. Sunil took his first podium finish, albeit 20 seconds off the winner.

K.Y. Ahamed took the honours in the Group D 130cc Novice category. After a long battle with S. Kannan, Ahamed took the lead on the last lap and held on for the win. E Saravanan secured third spot.

A total of 13 races, including the One Make Series for Honda, Yamaha and TVS, took place with 10 riders from Nepal in the fray.

Akash Dingare inched one step closer to the title with a win over Lal Rindika in the YZF R15 Novice category in the Yamaha MMSC One Make series.

Championship contender A. Muralidharan, who trailed by one point as they headed into the final round, had to retire after four laps. Shreyas Shankar took the final step on the podium.

Sumit Lucas Toppo bagged the title with a close fought win in the Honda CBR 150cc Open category. It was a thrilling race that saw many lead changes. Toppo managed to hold on in the end beating Ananth Raj and Arvind Ganesh.

Toppo won the second race too while Arun Muthukrishnan finished in second place ahead of D. Dinesh.

Lal Rindika continued his excellent run with a fourth consecutive win in the TVS Apache RTR 180 Novice class and it put him in with a chance for the title as well.

Championship leader K.Y. Ahamed came in second, but had his lead cut to four points. Pole-sitter Amit Richard finished in third place.

Rindika went on to achieve a double as he won the second race beating Akash Dingare by less than three-tenths of a second at the finish line. Both riders swapped places many times before Rindika finished ahead. Amit Richard was a distant third.

In the Yamaha YZF R15 Open category, Mathana Kumar continued his fine run of form to close in on Championship leader Shyam Shankar with a dominating win.

The battle for second was extremely close with Shyam Shankar, Ananth Raj and Abhishek all finishing within a second off each other.

Amit Richard too his first win in the Honda CBF Stunner Novice category after holding off Akash Dingare while Mithun Kumar completed the podium and championship leader Meka Vidhuraj got a penalty and finished in fourth place.

India's top riders, Sarath Kumar and Rajini were involved in a tight race in the Honda CBR 250cc class. Sarath Kumar managed to beat his mentor Rajini while Dinesh Kumar pipped A. Prabhu to finish third.

In the TVS Apache RTR 180 Open category, championship leader Mathana Kumar won a tight race ahead of Arvind Ganesh and Ananth Raj. For most of the race, the top four riders were covered by less than a second.