Pillai triumphs as Sarath, Rajini pack up

With former Spanish Moto 3 rider Sarath Kumar and Losail winner K Rajni retiring on lap 3, Vivek Pillai took advantage of the situation to win the Group C 165cc Open class race in the second round of the FMSCI Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship that concluded here Sunday.

Finishing behind Pillai in the action-packed race were Jagan Kumar and Sumit Lucas Toppo while K Ahmed of TVS Racing achieved a double by winning both the races in the Group D 130cc Novice category.

Ahmed finished ahead of M Sethu Babu and R. Venkatraman who crossed the finish line side by side in the first race and in the next outing, he came in ahead of Venkataraman and S Sahay.

In the Group D 165cc Novice class, Muralidharan survived a great battle with Meka Viduraj to win after having a better aggregate time in the overall race.

The race was split into two parts due to an accident and while Muralidharan was faster in the first part of the race, Meka crossed the finish line in first place on re-start. However when the times were merged, it appeared that Muralidharan had just finished ahead. Balaji from Sparks Racing took the final step of the podium.

Also achieving a double was Toppo who won the CBR 250R and CBR 150cc class races in the Honda MMSC One Make Championship.

Toppo came through an intense battle with Shyam Shankar in the 250R race with just 0.200 secs separating the two while Sarath Kumar finished in third place. Toppo went on to dominate the CBR 150 race to finish ahead of Ananth Raj and Arvind Ganesh.

The experienced Shyam Shankar held off Ananth Raj to win the Yamaha YZF R15 Open class in the MMSC One Make Championship with Abhishek V finishing in a distant third place.

Mizoram's Lal Rindika took the honours in the YZF R15 Novice class for his maiden success while Mithun Kumar and Ajith finished behind him in that order.

In the TVS one-make series, S Sahay won the TVS Apache RTR 180 Novice class while K Ahmed edged out Kannan S by a mere 0.005 seconds in the battle for second spot.

In the RTR Open race, P Ananth Raj triumphed while SK Prakash finished second and Allwyn Jebaz completed the podium.