Karan Tharani bags a double with VW Vento

Piloting the turbo-charged VW Vento, Karthik Tharani authored a dream script for Volkswagen Motorsport’s weekend with a grand double in the premium ITC category as the second round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Car Racing Championship concluded at the Kari Motor Speedway. 

Also scoring a double were Hyderabad’s Jeet Jhabak and Bengaluru schoolboy Sohil Shah (M Sport) in the Formula LGB 1300 category as he took the top honors in Race 1 and 3 while Nellore’s Viswas Vijayaraj (DTS Racing) won Race 2. RP Rajarajan (Performance Racing) won a close Super Stock race that went down to the wire.

Volkswagen Motorsport team, making their debut in the Indian Touring Cars category, it was a highly-successful weekend as they won all the three races. Incidentally, races in all categories, except VW Ameo Class. The two ITC races highlighted the Sunday’s proceedings with extremely close contests and incidents in Race 3 bringing out the Safety Car. Having finished second behind team-mate, Kolhapur’s Dhruv Shivaji Mohite in the first of the ITC tripleheader yesterday, Chennai-based Tharani led a 1-2-3 finish for VW Motorsport in Race 2 and followed it up with a thrilling win in Race 3 in the afternoon, ahead of Mohite and Arjun Balu (Race Concepts).

In both the races, Mohit finished second while team-mate Ishaan Dodhiwala took the third spot in Race 2, but spun off in the next outing that led to a Safety Car period, and where Balu came in a creditable third, his second of the weekend. While the podium finishers hogged the limelight, it was 77-year old D Vidyaprakash who stole the hearts with stirring drives that saw him finish fourth in both the races.

His defending the third spot in Race-2 until late in the last lap against Dodhiwala, 29, before letting the youngster pass, earned him high praise for clean racing. “I just can’t believe that someone at his age can drive like that. I couldn’t pass him until the last lap when he didn’t stop me from overtaking after I put the nose on the inside line,” gushed Dodhiwala after his third-place finish. The Championship moves to the MMRT track, Sriperumbudur, near Chennai, where Round 3 will be held from July 19 to 21.