09 Racing Season: It's a wrap!

  • Oct 9, 2009
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The 2009 JK Tyre National Racing Championship came to a close just recently at Chennai. Here's a review of the top finishers in this hotly contested season that saw quality racing action through rain and shine!

The sunset of October 4 at the MMST Race Track at Sriperumbudur near Chennai also brought with it a close to the 2009 season of the JK Tyre National Racing Championship. The 12th season of India's official road racing championship for four wheels continued to bring renewed hope to young Indian racers, giving them ever more exposure to the heat of competitive motorsport and offering them broadening vistas for great new careers ahead.

The championship involves a great mix of open wheel car, touring car and motorcycle racing, and is currently one of the few championships in India that is offering support and opportunity to motorsport enthusiasts across the country. Conducted at India's precious racetracks at the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore and the MMST Circuit in Chennai, the championship runs for about nine months of the year during which drivers compete in as many as seven classes of road racing for cars and bikes.

The premier class of racing in the season is the Formula Rolon Chevrolet series. The one-make series features cars built in Coimbatore, running 120bhp 1.6-litre engines from the Chevrolet Optra and mated with racing gearboxes. This year, the battle for the title was between a bunch of talented youngsters and went down to the wire. Saran Vikram, Ashwin Sunder and Gaurav were all in the hunt for the 209 crown, and an appeal by Ashwin from Narain Karthikeyan's Team NK Speed Racing meant that the decision for the season winner had not been made by the time this went in print.


The championship also runs other one-make open-wheel classes like the Formula LGB Swift and Formula LGB Hyundai series. The LGB Hyundai series is run in cars powered by 1.4-litre Hyundai engines, is intended to be of an endurance race nature and is run for a large number of laps. The class this year saw Akhil Devrag from Team Rams Racing take top honours. The other open-wheel class, Formula LGB Swift has cars running on 1.3-litre Suzuki Swift engines and usually works as an entry-level series for young racers graduating from racing karts onto full-blown racetracks.

The championship also sees veterans and youngsters alike compete in the Super Saloons category, in which heavily modified street cars go up against one another. This class is hugely popular for its relatively lower running costs. This season as well, the fight was between veterans B Vijayakumar and Radha Selvaraj, amongst whom Vijaykumar finished with the upper hand and the championship. The motorcycle classes, added recently to draw in crowds with riders displaying their skills on 600cc and 1000cc sportsbikes, also saw an encouraging participation. K.V. Balaji finished at the head of the 600cc general category, Vivek Pillai in the 600cc experts class and Alok Shashidhar in the 1000cc Superbike category.

The closing of the event saw a high profile turnout from Volkswagen, known to be involved worldwide for the VW Polo Cup - a clean and sorted out way for youngsters to enter the world of professional motor racing. Present at the event were Kris Nissen, Director of Motorsport at Volkswagen, accompanied by Jeorg Meuller, Volkswagen India Head. Volkswagen is currently in the final phase of its plans to start the Polo Cup in India. The duo announced at the occasion that VW had invited Indian drivers Armaan Ebrahim and Saran Vikram to race in the final round of the ADAC Formula Master Series races later this month in Germany.

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