Chennai: On a day of drama, marked by crashes leading to unexpected turnarounds, Bengaluru’s Anish Damodara Shetty and local girl Ann Jennifer emerged champions in the Pro-Stock 165cc and Girls (Stock 165cc) categories, respectively, as the fifth and final round of the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship dished out edge-of-the-seat excitement at the MMRT, here on Saturday.
The penultimate day of the 2018 racing season saw Deepak Ravikumar of TVS Racing, running third in the last of the six laps, clinching his maiden win in the premier Super Sport 165cc class after championship leaders and his team-mates, Jagan Kumar and Ahamed Arif crashed out after coming together at Turn-1 on the third lap.
Ann Jennifer was pushed to the limits by her Sparks Racing team-mate Ryhana Bee who even briefly led before yielding ground in the last lap. Jennifer thus clinched her fourth win in five races to seal the championship in her category.
Meanwhile, Anish Shetty, a techie and part-time gym trainer from Bengaluru, showed remarkable patience to win the Pro-Stock 165cc race by overtaking three front-runners on the last lap. It was 23-year old Shetty’s fourth win and took his tally to 156, way ahead of second-placed Kevin Kannan (Rockers Racing) who remained on 115 after crashing out in the race.
The results (Provisional – all six laps unless mentioned):
Super Sport 165cc (Race-1): 1. Deepak Ravikumar (TVS Racing) (11mins, 54.648secs); 2. Mathana Kumar (Honda Ten10 Racing) (12:39.132); 3. Rajiv Sethu (Honda Ten10 Racing) (13:07.859).
Pro-Stock 301-400cc (Race-1): 1. Sathyanarayana Raju (Gusto Racing India) (11:32.361); 2.Rahil PIllarishetty (Sparks Racing) (11:32.647); 3. Prabhu Arunagiri (Team Alisha Abdullah)
(11:32.741).
Pro-Stock 165cc (Race-1): 1. Anish Damodara Shetty (Bengaluru) (12:13.060); 2. Anup Kumar (Team Alisha Abdullah) (12:14.279); 3. Kannan Subramaniam (TVS Racing) (12:14.662).
Girls (Stock 165cc, 5 laps): 1. Ann Jennifer (Sparks Racing) (11:19.207); 2. Ryhana Bee (Sparks Racing) (11:19.362); 3. Nivetha Kumar (Pvt) (11:38.435).
Stock 165cc (Heat-1, 5 laps): 1. Varun Sobhan (Speed Up Racing) (10:55.058); 2. Anand Rajendran (Pvt) (10:55.086); 3. Venkatesan I (Pvt) (10:55.270).
TVS Girls (Race-1): 1. Ann Jenifer AS (Chennai) (11:55.791); 2. Ryhana Bee (Chennai) (12:01.809); 3. Elakiya R (Chennai) (12:25.938).
Honda Talent Cup – CBR 250 (Race-1, 6 laps): 1. Abhishek Vasudev (Bengaluru) (12:22.261); 2. Anish Damodara Shetty (Hubballi) (12:22.641); 3. Aravind Balakrishnan (Chennai) (12:29.805).
CBR 150 (Novice, Race-1): 1. Mohamed Mikail (Chennai) (13:06.889); 2. Kritik Vasant Habib (Gadag) (13:14.110); 3. Anandhu KK (Chennai) (13:15.080).