India's Ananth Raj will be starting a poor 16th from the grid followed by Vivek Pillai in the 10th Yamaha ASEAN Cup Race as hosts Indonesia and Thailand dominated the qualifying rounds here today.
Chennai lad Ananth secured his fastest lap timing of 2:01.149 minutes in the second qualifying round as it was marginally better than his disappointing first lap crash in the qualifying one of the ST (Sport) category.
Indian riders improved on their lap timings at the qualification two after an ordinary first session at the Sentul International Circuit here.
Vivek, also from Chennai, finished behind his teammate with his best lap coming in 2:01.379 minutes at the 3.96 km long track.
Others Indian riders, Akash Dingare (2:02.390), Shyam Shankar (2:02.673) and Lal Rindika (2:03.596) too bettered their lap timing in the second round to finish 20th, 21st and 22nd position.
The competitors, in this category, were riding on Yamaha's YZF-R15 model.
Participating in his maiden international race, 23-year-old Ananth said his main focus for tomorrow's race would be on joining the leading bunch from the start.
"I will be starting on the sixth lane. My aim would be to join the second row at the beginning of the race. There are areas on the track where I can improve few seconds to get better timings. I have started to get the hang of this track," said Ananth, who crashed in the practice round as well.
"In the last practice session, I crashed in the final lap and the first qualifying elimination was terrible".
But Ananth recovered well from the two crashes he suffered initially to be the best amongst the Indians.
On his experience of riding at an international arena, he said,"You get to learn a lot after watching these guys. They don't wait for corners to overtake other riders. A minimal opening and they will just whiz past you. It's incredible".
The pole position for tomorrow's race was bagged by Thailand's Prawat Yannawut who finished with the best time of 1:58.063 minute followed by Agus Setiawan of Indonesia (1:58.427).
