VW Vento Cup 2016: Dodhiwala and Singh dominate opening round

Ishaan Dodhiwala and Karminder Pal Singh, neither one of them strangers to racing in the Volkswagen Vento Cup, cast a long shadow over the rest of the field in the opening round of the 2016 edition of the one-make touring car series at Coimbatore's Kari Motor Speedway this weekend.

After securing pole position, Dodhiwala won a pretty straightforward opening race ahead of Keith Desouza, who was also competing in the Indian Junior Touring Car Championship (IJTC), which formed part of the card for the third round of the MRF MMSC FMSCI National Racing Championship.

The Vento Cup cars lived up to the speed potential that was expected of them after switching to the MRF banner and being supplied with tyres from the company that has had a long presence in Indian motor sport.

With lap times that were in the region of 2.5 seconds a lap faster than what the cars achieved when shod with JK Tyre rubber, the Vento Cup machines were within two seconds of matching the fastest Indian Touring Car (ITC) machines. It is quite a significant jump given that the ITC machines weigh around 250 kilograms less than the Vento Cup car, which is based on its production counterpart; a car that is built to modern safety standards unlike outdated Esteems and Honda Citys.

Not to mention the Vento Cup grid was made up of 17 cars as opposed to just seven in ITC, supposedly the pinnacle of touring car racing in India.

There was also certainly far cleaner and responsible racing featured in the Vento Cup races where drivers resisted the urge to go too hot into the downhill, right-handed first corner that normally sees a lot of incidents.

However, the addition of sudden rain into the mix in the second race did result in one car being caught out at that corner. It was just a slice of the drama that defined the race where Volkswagen Motorsport initially took the call to send the field out on slick tyres before steady rain forced them into the pits to change to wet weather tyres. Further action ensued on account of the reverse grid that saw the top eight finishers from the first race start in the opposite order for what was the final race of the weekend.

Singh and Dodhiwala steadily made their way up the field to finish first and second with Aditya Vijaya Pawar in third place.