Grand slam victory, first ever female race winner, hattrick of podiums: Round 1 recap of Indian Racing Festival 2023
Grand slam victory, first ever female race winner, hattrick of podiums: Round 1 recap of Indian Racing Festival 2023
Here's everything that went down at the first round of Indian Racing Festival featuring Indian Racing League and Formula 4 Indian Championship.
The Indian Racing Festival kicked off in Chennai last weekend with 2 championships. Indian Racing League returned for their second season while India got it’s first taste of an FIA F4 championship.
Indian Racing League is a franchise based racing championship which made it’s debut last year. The League currently has Hyderabad, Kochi, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Goa as it’s 6 teams with Kochi being the reigning team champions and Hyderabad’s Akhil Rabindra winning the driver’s championship last year. The championship runs on Wolf Thunder GB08 cars.
Formula 4 India made it’s long awaited debut alongside IRL this year, the championship races the Gen 2 Mygale F4 cars and has the technical support from MP Motorsport to run all the cars.
The race weekend comprises of 2 qualifying sessions and 3 races in F4. For IRL, 2 qualifying sessions and 2 races make up the race weekend, however since the team has 4 drivers sharing 2 cars (2 per car) 2 different drivers drive the same car for those two qualifying and race sessions, the cumulative points add up to the car number and the points for both cars add to the teams points.
Friday saw practice sessions lined up for both F4 and IRL. Saturday was qualifying day. For F4, two qualifying sessions were held, Qualifying 1 for Race 1 and and Qualifying 2 for Race 3 with Race 2 being a reverse grid race. Akshay Bohra (#31) set the fastest time in both qualifying sessions. Race 1 took place on Saturday with Akshay Bohra taking a Grand Slam victory! Rishon Rajeev and Shahan Ali Mohsin completed the podium.
For IRL since there are 2 drivers per car, Driver 1 does qualifying 1 and Race 1 (both on the same day), while driver 2 does qualifying 2 and Race 2 (both on the same day). Ruhaan Alva from Godspeed Kochi set the fastest time in Qualifying 1 while Sohil Shah set the fastest time in qualifying 2 by a margin of 1.3 seconds.
IRL Race 1 was supposed to take place on Saturday but due to weather conditions the race was postponed to Sunday.
Sunday kicked off with Race 1 of IRL in which Ruhaan Alva took lights to flag victory for Godspeed Kochi. Raoul Hyman of Goa Aces came second and Jon Lancaster from Chennai Turbo Riders taking P3.
Action followed with Race 2 and Race 3 of Formula 4 where Race 2 saw the grid reversed from the finishing order of Race 1. Cooper Webster took the win in both races, giving him a 9 points lead in the championship over Akshay Bohra after the first round.
Akshay Bohra and Shahan Ali Mohsin completed the podium in Race 2, while for race 3 Alex Sawer and Shahan Ali Mohsin taking the final podium places. Shahan Ali Mohsin who took 3 third places in round 1 is also 3rd in the championship standings with 13 points off the leader.
Race 2 of the IRL was next, and boy, that was some race to finish off the inaugural round. The race started behind safety car due to weather conditions with Sohil Shah on pole position. Amidst the challenging conditions of a rain-soaked Madras International Circuit, chaos ensued right from the initial laps. In the first racing lap we saw many cars spinning off the track, including the race leader Sohil Shah himself. Nikhil Bohra inherited the lead with Gabriella Jilkova in second, safety car was out again to recover the cars stranded on track. Once the safety car came in to resume racing, we saw Mitch Gilbert from P3 also coming in along with the two Chennai cars for reasons unknown. A few more laps into the race and Nikhil Bohra spun out of the race lead, hitting the barriers but still running and Jilkova inheriting the lead. Nikhil Bohra who was still running, made his way up through the pack and at one moment it looked like he might win it on the final lap but then he hit a patch of standing water and took out race leader Jilkova with him, giving Sarah Moore the lead of the race with just a couple of corners to go. Sarah Moore drove brilliantly making no mistake to keep her nose clean and pick up the race win in challenging conditions.
Akash Gowda of Speed Demons Delhi and Sai Sanjay of Chennai Turbo Riders completed the podium positions for Race 2.
An action packed round 1 can only give us a glimpse us what’s to come in the championship. The Indian racing festival returns for round 2 on November 29th at the Madras International Circuit, watch the races live on Star Sports 2 or on the Indian Racing League official YouTube channel.