Racers Deepak, Yash impress in National Championship practice session

Bengaluru drivers Deepak Paul Chinnappa of Race Concepts and schoolboy Yash Aradhya grabbed pole positions in their respective categories while Hyderabads Anindith Reddy was overall quickest in the MRF F1600 practice session in the fifth and final round of the MRF MMSC fmsci National Racing Championship at the MMRT track here on Friday.

Championship contenders Anindith Reddy and Sandeep Kumar (Chennai) set the early pace in the two practice sessions. Anindith was overall quickest, albeit by a mere three-hundredth of a second with a best of one minute, 40.130 seconds to Sandeep's 01:40.164, but the real battle lies over the weekend when three races are scheduled after Saturday's qualifying session.

Behind the leaders was local challenger Chetan Korada, who showed improvement with every lap, clocking a best of 01:40.815 and then going even quicker in the second session when he did a 01:40.350.

The qualifying session in the premier Indian Touring Cars class reflected the closeness of contest among the front-runners.

Deepak, who leads the championship by just seven points, was the quickest in both the practice sessions, and followed it up with a blistering lap of 01:53.068 in the qualifying ahead of the Red Rooster Performance pair of defending champion Arjun Narendran (01:53.132), second in the championship, and Ashish Ramaswamy (01:53.140).

Yash (Momentum Motorsport), second on the leaderboard, topped the charts in both the Formula LGB 1300 categories (National and Rookie Cup) categories in the qualifying, well clear of team-mate Pune's Aanjan Patodia (DTS) and championship leader Arya Singh (DTS Racing).

Also finishing on pole in their respective categories were: Mihkhail Merchant of Team Game Over (Indian Junior Touring Cars), Bala Vijay of Performance Racing (Super Stock) and Raghul Rangasamy of Performance Racing (Esteem Cup) while Mumbai's Saurav Bandyopadhyay qualified first in the Volkswagen Ameo Cup.

--IANS

tri/dg