The second day of the Volkswagen Ameo cup was one filled, hope, anxiety, surprise and of course joy. The unseasonal rains continued to pound the MMSRT for the second day in succession which resulted in a late start for the on track action. But even before the Ameo cup got underway, the track proceedings had to be halted due to massive 11 car pileup from the MRF 1600F category.
Once the vehicles had been recovered and the track had cleared, the Ameo cup boys decided to take the plunge once again and what a race it turned out to be. This was completely new territory for these compact sedan race cars and they delivered impressively.
One of the major performers of the season Pratik Sonawane, who had started in 10th, climbed up the order with aggressive driving early in the race, however misjudged a corner lap 5 and had to retire from the race. This gave an opportunity to Jeet Jhabakh to take lead followed by Aiman Sadat and Siddharth Mehdiratta. The star driver of the race was Siddharth who started way back in fourteenth position, but quickly moved up and bagged the third position.
The final race of the weekend saw Pratik Sonawane carefully and strategically chasing to the top position after starting from fourth and holding on to it till the chequered flag came out. Siddharth jumped up one position by overtaking Shubhomoy on the second lap itself. Thereafter the trio Pratik, Siddharth and Shubhomoy held their positions throughout the race. Shubhomoy did feel the heat with Jeet Jhabakh trying to move ahead of him but he managed to hold his position.
On the conclusion of the Round 3 of Ameo Class 2019 National Championship Sirish Vissa, head of Volkswagen Motorsport India said, “It’s been a challenging weekend for the team and drivers due to extreme weather conditions. We are proud of our technical team who have put in a lot of efforts in servicing the cars to changing the tyres from slicks to wets and back to slick tyres for the final race. It is always exciting to see top drivers putting in such close lap times. The Race two was quite difficult, the drivers showed maturity keeping the cars on track in the immensely challenging conditions.”
Volkswagen Ameo Cup 2019 Round 3: day 1 report
Volkswagen Ameo Cup Car at the 2018 CarWale Track Day
Building a Volkswagen Ameo Cup Car
