New Delhi: The countdown for the grand finale of the county’s biggest motor racing event to be held at the Buddh International Circuit has begun in right earnest. The stage is set for the ultimate showdown in the 16th JK Tyre Racing Championship as the race for crowing of champions enters the home stretch. There is a perceptible buzz of excitement in the air as championship contenders get ready to battle it out for one last time on the 5.14km Formula One track in Greater Noida from November 30-December 1.
The highlight of the year has been the introduction of the JK Racing India Series using the cars that formed the grid in the erstwhile Formula BMW Championship. The FIA specced cars, built on Mygale chassis and powered by BMW 1.2 litre engines, have emerged as the preferred platform for launching young talent from India into higher formulas of single-seater racing in Europe.
The JK Racing India Series has so far provided the most exciting races. Going into the final round the race to the ultimate glory in Indian racing remains split wide open. It could be anyone’s game. Chennai-based driver, Vishnu Prasad, riding on the back of a superlative performance in the second round and a rewarding outing in the third round leads the points table with 179 points. But at the moment, the championship lead doesn’t mean anything as 15-year-old Arjun Maini from Bangalore turned on the heat on Prasad in the previous round to take two wins. The graduate from JK Tyre’s karting programme sits in second place on the leaderboard with 145 points. Another bright prospect, Chittesh Mandody, is lying in third place with 108 points. The Kolhapur lad who stepped up into this class barely a few weeks before the start of the championship has been a revelation this year.
With a maximum of 84 points up for grabs from three races in the final round, including points for pole position and fastest lap, Prasad doesn’t have the luxury to sit easy. With Maini displaying red-hot form that saw him taking two wins and second place in the previous round, Prasad has to dig deep into his experience and tenacity to lay his hands on the inaugural JK Racing India Series. With the stakes being so high one can safely presume that the top guns in the championship will be racing for lives.
“It’s good to go into the final round with the championship lead, but it doesn’t mean much. I have to come up with the best performance because the stakes are pretty high and things can turn around in the blink,” said Prasad in the run-up to the grand finale.
In the Formula LGB 4, highly experienced Sarosh Hataria has established the solid lead of 92 points with a total of 187 points. A string of race-winning performances in the previous three rounds have given the Dark Don Racing driver a comfortable cushion going into the final round. He needs just a couple of points to close out the championship.
Hataria might be able to breathe easy with a massive lead of points at the top, but there is no such luxury for Prasad and Kartik Krishna. The duo is separated for second and third places by a solitary point. Prasad, driving for Meco Motor Sports lies in second place with 95 points with Krishna in third place with 94 points. While Hataria might like to stay away from any close action, expect Prasad and Krishna go wheel-to-wheel in the three Formula LGB 4 races.
It’s equally a close contest in the JK Tyre-Volkswagen Polo R Cup. South African driver, Jeffrey Kruger, doing his first full season in the championship as a guest driver has been a class apart. But his guest driver status rules him out as championship contender.
Prashanth Tharani riding on the back of strong showing in the previous seven races leads the points table among Indian drivers with 256 points. But the Chennai-based driver has Mumbai’s Rahil Noornai snapping at his heels with 232 pints, while Chandigarh’s Angad Matharoo is placed third further 10 points adrift at 222 points. So, who takes this year’s VW Polo R Cup Championship to earn a free entry in next year’s Scirocco Cup in Germany is anybody’s guess.
Apart from the high stake championship races fans will be treated to a serious dose of glamour by Ultima Race Queens, who will take part in a support race behind the wheels of race tuned VW Polo R TDI cars.
The world’s most glamorous grid has been drawn from drivers hailing from Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway apart from Porto Rico, Slovakia and Hungary to name a few. The Ultima Race Queens are part of a unique FIA sanctioned racing programme called the FIA Lotus Ladies Cup, which has been instituted with the specific purpose of encouraging women drivers to take up racing as a serious sport.
The idea behind the support races featuring Ultima Race Queens in the final round JK Tyre Racing Championship is to highlight women’s power in this extreme sport and to encourage Indian girls to take up to this sport, thus taking another crucial step towards the development of Indian motor sport. JK Tyre has produced some of the most talented Indian male race drivers and with the JK Ultima Queens Cup they have taken the step to inspire Indian women into motorsports at a professional level.
The race weekend is all set for a grand finale with exciting action on the cards.