Chennai, July 10 (Representative) While Rajini Krishnan and Sarvesh Balappa notched up their fourth straight win, KY Ahamed won an absolute thriller that lit up thesecond round of the MRF MMSC FMSCI Indian National Motorcycle RacingChampionship 2022 which concluded at the Madras International Circuit,about 40 km here on Sunday.Starting P9 for the eight-lap race in the popular Pro-Stock 165cc Open race,Ahamed (Petronas TVS Racing), who endured two crashes on Saturday,showed poise and required aggression to snatch a dramatic win from PacerYamaha’s Mathana Kumar and Rajiv Sethu (Idemitsu Honda SK69 Racing)with just one-tenth of a second separating the trio at the finish.The eventual outcome was in suspense as the three front-running ridersexchanged lead after two other contenders, Deepak Ravikumar (PetronasTVS Racing) and Prabhu Arunagiri (Pacer Yamaha), retired in the secondhalf of the race.
Ahamed then pulled out a last-gasp win in a photo-finishthat would be remembered for long.Meanwhile, in the premier Pro-Stock 301-400cc Open category, Rajini Krishnan(RACR Castrol Power1), riding Yamaha R3 with a lighter frame than last year’s,was simply unstoppable on his way to a fluent win that underlined his classand calibre, as he destroyed the field. His victory margin was over 10 secondsin the eight-lap race with the Petronas TVS Racing duo of KY Ahamed andDeepak Ravikumar coming in second and third, respectively.It was Rajini’s fourth win on the trot this season, following his double in thefirst round at Coimbatore last month.Ryhana Bee, after a disappointing first round in Coimbatore last month, bouncedback to win the National Championship Girls race (Stock 165cc) to put her campaignon track. She took the top honours ahead of Bengaluru’s Aditi Krishnan (WinverveApex Racing Academy) who moved up a spot after 2nd placed Lani Zena Fernandez(Speed Up Racing) was docked a 15-second penalty which dropped her to fourthbehind Axor Sparks Racing’s Jagruti Penkar from Mumbai. Lani was penalised for“causing avoidable collision” that involved early race leader Ann Jennifer (AlphaRacing) who finished fifth.
Hubballi’s Sarvesh Balappa (Axor Sparks Racing) continued his dream run as hefinished the weekend with a double on the back of his two wins in the first roundto remain unbeaten in the Novice (Stock 165cc) category. Finishing second wasMd Samrul Zubair (Hyderabad) of Raceists Motorcycle Racing Club who startedthe race from P33 and worked his way up. His team-mate P Vignesh Goud, alsofrom Hyderabad, was third.Also scoring four consecutive wins were Sarthak Shrikant Chavan (Pune) andRaheesh Mudassar Khatri (Mumbai) in the NSF 250R and Novice (CBR 150)categories of the Idemitsu Honda India Talent Cup, besides Bengaluru schoolboy Chiranth Vishwanath in the Rookie class of the Petronas TVS One-MakeChampionship.