Reddy, Narendran shine at national racing meet

Anindith Reddy from Hyderabad and Coimbatores Arjun Narendran provided a thrilling finale to the third round of the Indian National Racing Championship here on Sunday.

Yash Aradhya, a 14-year old schoolboy from Bengaluru, also grabbed attention by chalking up his maiden win.

Reddy finished the weekend on a high by chalking up his second win in the MRF FF1600 triple-header with Chennai's Sandeep Kumar denying the Hyderabad racer a hat-trick, while Coimbatore-based Narendran, the defending champion in the premier Indian Touring Cars class, scored his first victory this season, to end the four-in-a-row win-streak of Bengaluru's Deepak Paul Chinnappa.

Earlier, Yash, a ninth standard student of Bishop Cotton's school, drove a well-judged race to claim top honours in both Formula LGB 1300 and the Rookie categories which also produced its share of tight finishes.

Kolhapur's Dhruv Mohite, starting third on the grid, drove a near-flawless race for his first win in the MRF MMSC Volkswagen Ameo Cup race ahead of Karminder Singh of Delhi and South African guest driver Devin Robertson.

Both the MRF FF1600 races today dished out exciting fare. Sandeep Kumar shrugged off a bad start owing to wheelspin and recovered well to take a jump on the front-runners Chetan Korada and winner of lung-opener on Saturday Reddy, in the very first lap before nursing the lead to the finish.

In the next race, the third of the weekend in this class, it was Reddy's turn to fight his way through the pack and survive a spin after coming into contact with race leader Korada who thus dropped out of contention while Sandeep Kumar came in second with Kolkata schoolboy Arya Singh finishing third.

Likewise, both the ITC races, especially the duel between Narendran and Chinnappa were as close as they could get with little separating the two. In the day's first race, Chinnappa, starting third on the reverse grid, had the measure of Narendran for his fourth win in a row. However, in the next race, pole-sitter Narendran enjoyed his best outing of the weekend to pip Chinnappa by a mere half-a-car length in a thrilling finish.

--IANS

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