Chennai, June 19 (IANS) The 13th JK Tyre National Racing Championship started off on the wrong tyre, as it were, with the new-look Formula Rolon races being postponed due to a ‘major component’ failure, here Saturday.
The Formula Rolon, fitted with 1300cc Maruti Esteem engine, had its first test run last evening and three of the 13 cars packed up due to engine seizure. Subsequently, the organisers, on inspection of the engines, decided postponed the two races scheduled for the weekend.
According to a press release from Akbar Ebrahim of LG Sports Ltd, who have developed the cars, in view of the difference in performance levels of the Formula Rolon cars, it was decided to withdraw the vehicles from round one of the championship.
‘There has been a component failure which was detected last night after detailed inspections of all engines post the free practice sessions. This had led to the scoring and damaging of the cam shaft cups and oil journals.
‘In addition, it has also bee noticed that there is a lot of imtermittancy in the Ignition coil which caused three premature failures on three engines,’ the release said.
Meanwhile, the title sponsors, JK Tyre have compensated all the drivers of the Formula Rolon cars with free flight tickets for the next round scheduled to be held in Coimbatore July 17-18, the release added.
The postponement of the premier class programme took the gloss off the weekend races that will have competitions in the LGB Formula Swift and Touring Car categories.
In the qualifying session this afternoon, Sailesh Bolisetti of RAD Racing and winner of the first round of the Volkswagen Polo Cup last month, topped the time charts in the Super Saloon class clocking two minutes, 02.594 seconds while in the Formula Swift class, S. Narendran of TVS Girling team was the quickest in 1:56.527.
Veteran saloon car racer M Sivaramakrishnan caused a buzz when he flipped his car on Turn 4, but escaped unhurt and said his car would be repaired in time for the races Sunday.
The results (qualifying session):
Formula LGB Swift: S Narendran (TVS Girling) 1 (1min, 56.527secs); Ajay Kini (Wallace Sports) 2 (1:57.983); Ameya Walavalkar (TVS Girling) 3 (1:58.019).
Indian Super Saloon: Sailesh Bolisetti (RAD Racing) 1 (2:02.594); Raj Virdhan (Prime Racing) 2 (2:04.306); Siddharth Kishore (Performance Racing) 3 (2:05.026).
