The 2017 INMRC comes to a close as Jagan Kumar of TVS Racing snatches the title from Honda Ten10 Racing’s Rajiv Sethu in a hard fought duel.
The final round of the 2017 Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship (INMRC) was quite an affair as TVS Racing’s Jagan Kumar won his sixth straight title in what was probably one of the most closely fought battles in the Super Sport Indian (165cc) category.
Going into the fifth and final round, Jagan trailed Honda Ten10 Racing’s Rajiv Sethu by just one point. In fact, he closed the gap on him only in round 4. Before the fourth round, he was placed fourth in the championship. However, Jagan took a sensational double-win in round four, gaining full 50 points, and moved up to second place in the points table. Jagan’s championship hopes were also resurrected in round 4 as Sethu crashed in one of the races.
In the final round, Jagan managed to beat Sethu yet again as he fended off the Honda Ten10 rider in the first race of the weekend. The duel between these two was quite intense for most part of the race as expected. However, a mistake from Sethu cost him a few seconds as he ran off the track around a corner. Jagan, on the other, ran a flawless race to the chequered flag. After the win in the first race of the final round, Jagan led the championship by six points going into the penultimate race the next day.
On Sunday, it wasn’t a thrilling finale that everybody had been hoping for. First, the rains disrupted the proceedings, which meant the organisers were forced to use the short loop (2.1km) instead of the full circuit (3.7km). And once the race began, the tension between the top two contenders only lasted for a few seconds as Sethu crashed at the turn 2 on the very first lap of the race. Jagan, on the other hand, maintained his cool and calmly went on to finish second in the race. Jagan bagged the championship title by 24 points.
In the Pro-Stock Class, Aravind Balakrishnan emerged as the championship winner after scoring a total of 138 points over the season. In the Girls Stock 165cc Class, Aishwarya Pissay of Apex Racing had already sealed the championship after round 4, but even in the final race she was unbeaten.
Amarnath Menon of Gusto Racing won the Super Sport Indian 300-400cc championship while Sai Rahil Pillarishetty of Sparks Racing bagged the Novice 165cc title.
Although Rajiv Sethu couldn’t win the INMRC title this year, he emerged as the winner of the Honda CBR 250 One-Make Championship. Other one-make championship winners for this year are Satyanarayana Raju (Sparks Racing, Honda CBR 150), S Sivanesan (TVS Apache RTR 200 Open), Anup Kumar (TVS Novice) and Nitish Kumar (Yamaha R15 Novice).
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