National Racing: Reddy wraps MRF 1600 title as Keshav takes maiden win

Reported by: Rachit Thukral

MRF FORMULA FORD 1600: Reddy wins title as Lee Keshav takes maiden win

The 2014 National Racing Championship came to a conclusion today at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida with Tarun Reddy wrapping the MRF Formula 1600 championship at a tender age of 16 - becoming the youngest driver to clinch the title in the process.

The Chennai-born racer arrived in Delhi with a healthy advantage of 23 points over his nearest rival Advait Deodhar, who failed to make it to the event due to health issues. After winning the first race of the weekend on Saturday, the 16-year-old suffered from mechanical problems in race 2 which eventually forced him to retire from the race. In race 3, however, with reliability on his side, he took an easy lights-to-flag victory to seal the championship in style.

Meanwhile, Lee Kashav Gupta - the head of design of the popular Hike Messenger - carried the pride of Delhi along with him, took his first victory in the MRF 1600 category in the second race scheduled for the national racing weekend.The key to his victory was an excellent restart after the Safety Car period that helped him take the lead of the race from Kartik Tharani Singh. With a podium finish in each of the three races, he took the second runners up spot in the championship.

Dhruv Behl, the founding editor of autoX magazine, continued to impress as a guest race, with a podium finish in race 2 being the highlight of his weekend before finishing fourth in the final race of the day.

TOURING CARS: Narendran leaves no stone unturned in ITC

Arjun Narendran was in no mood of being complacent despite having already clinched the Indian Touring Car title yesterday. The Coimbatore born driver took his ninth victory of the season ahead of Big Foot Racing teammates Aashish Ramaswamy and Sivaramakrishan.

In the junior touring category, VJ Senthil sealed the title after emerging victorious in a three way battle for supremacy in the final race. Charen Chandran finished second ahead of 2013 champion Feroze Khan.

TOYOTA ETIOS MOTOR RACING: Mascarenhas wins the title

The Toyota Etios Motor Race provided nearly the 10,000 fans present at the venue with the closest action in national racing yet again as both the races were won by a margin of less than half a second.

In race 3, Hisham in th #16 Toyota won the race from Dean Mascarenhas by just 0.448s before the latter took revenge in the second round to take the title.