Coimbatore: Taking pole position on a hot Saturday morning at Kari Motor Speedway for the very first race of the brand new Volkswagen Vento Cup series was ex-Polo Cup Champion, Sailesh Bolisetti. The very first champion of the premium one-make series run by Volkswagen in India returned to Coimbatore after five years for racing and showed his master-class by clocking 1:13.950 lap time during the qualifying. Right behind him was Polo R Cup 2015 Junior Champion, Anindith Reddy, just 0.007 seconds off the pace. The second row of the starting grid was occupied by Ishaan Dodhiwala and Sidharth Balasundaram.

As the light went off for the Race 1 of the weekend, Sailesh took off from the first spot on the grid and carried his lead all the way to the finish line. Anindith, who started second from the grid, lost two positions on the opening lap itself, giving way to Sidharth and Rajeev (who had started fourth and sixth respectively). Anindith fought back to third position on lap three and regained his second position on lap four. From there onwards, he kept closing in on leader Sailesh but failed to overtake him, finally settling for the second position. Karminder, starting fifth on the grid, put in consistently fast laps to come up to the third position by lap six and held it from there till the finish line.

While the top guys put in an excellent show at the front, there was no lack of action through the mid-grid where Ishaan, Raghav Sharma (starting 10th) and Sidharth got involved in tough battles to finish fourth, fifth and sixth respectively at the end.

Sailesh Bolisetti, winner of Race 1 commented, “I got off to a strong start and managed to build up a strong lead till mid-way. However, in the second half of the race, I wasn’t able to brake as hard and started losing a few seconds to Anindith. Though I managed to keep my lead till the chequered flag, I am already tensed for the Race 2 tomorrow where I will be starting from the eighth spot due to reverse grid.”

Second placed Annindith Reddy said, “It was an excellent race for me. Sailesh was fast and despite pushing very hard I couldn’t get ahead of him. Now I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s race.”

Karminder Singh commented after finishing on the last spot of the podium, “On the fifth lap, Sidharth made a mistake on the last corner and I immediately lined up to overtake him on the next lap in the first corner. Once I got in the third position, I tried my best to catch up with Sailesh and Anindith but couldn’t get past. I am very happy to start the season with a podium.”

Sirish Vissa, Head of Volkswagen Motorsport India said, “It has been a cracker of a start to the season. I am very proud of our drivers and our technical team who have put in their best for the season opener. The Vento Cup race car is a brand new race machine and hence we were a little nervous. But with this start we are confident of a fantastic season ahead. Today, there was clean racing through most of the race, but extremely exciting at the same time. Tomorrow is going to be even more exciting as the top 10 are within a second of each other.”