2016 JK Tyre Racing Championship Round 1: Maini and Mahadik win first two Euro JK 16 races

Rahul Richard Published: July 30, 2016, 09:14 PM IST

The first races of the 19th JK Tyre Racing Championship began today at the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore. There are three championships this season - LGB F4, JKFB02 (now called Euro JK 16) and the Indian Touring Cars. The ITC championship was reintroduced this year with the Vento Cup moving to the MMSC Indian National Racing Championship.

In the single ITC race held on Day 1, Ashish Ramaswamy from Red Rooster Racing took first place while Rajaram C and Vidyaprakash Damodaran of Prime Racing finished second and third respectively. Meanwhile, in Race 1 of the LGB F4 Championship, Vishnu Prasad of Meco Racing finished first, followed by Sudarshan Rao K and Ashwin Sundar from Dark Don Racing.

Raghul Rangasamy (99) fighting to hold his position against Rohit Khanna (10) in the LGB F4 race

The Euro JK 16 Championship featured updated versions of the JKFB02s from last year. These cars have been retuned to make 160PS of power instead of the 140PS they made last year, and also get better aerodynamics. According to JK Tyre, the top speed has now gone up to 260kmph from last year's 230kmph. All these improvements result in a lap time of around 1m1s at Kari Motor Speedway, which is close to four seconds quicker than in 2015.

Ananth Shanmugam only managed a 7th place finish in the first Euro JK 16 race 1 and didn't finish the second one.

Kush Maini won the first of the two races while Akhil Rabindra and Anindith Reddy took second and third. The second race had a major incident in Lap 1 involving Rabindra, Krishnaraaj Mahadik and Ricky Donison which called for a restart. The three of them made contact at C10 which resulted in Rabindra's car flipping over. While there were no injuries, four of the twelve cars (one from Race 1) were back in the pits. The race was delayed by half an hour to get these cars back on the grid. However, all but Rabindra made it to the start line.

Krishnaraaj Mahadik managed to win Race 2 despite being involved in an incident which called for a restart.

When the lights fell, Kush Maini held the lead for a short while before Anindith Reddy got past him. However, even he couldn't hold it for long as Donison and Krishnaraaj overtook him by Lap 7. 15 laps later, it was Donison who crossed the line first, followed by Krishnaraaj and Reddy. Unfortunately, Donison was awarded a 10-second penalty for a jump start, pushing Krishnaraaj up to first, Reddy to second and Aakash Gowda to third.