Calcutta: Mazdayar Vatcha Sunday evening emerged the fifth leg winner in the fourth JK Tyre National Karting championship at the Monte Carlo track in Clown Town.
Amar Patil was runner-up, while Frank was third. Vatcha and Patil have qualified for the national finals to be held later. Bengal’s Amittrajit Ghosh was fourth.
Vatcha not only made it to the final and won a trophy, he also won a round trip to Malaysia (courtesy tourism Malaysia) in the championship, being presented by Corsa SAIL and Speed of Bharat Petroleum. The meet was run with technical help from the Bengal Motor Sports Club (BMSC).
It was a tense 16-lap final, in which favourite Raymond Banerjee had to pull out midway due to a fuel transmission problem, and Sayantan Bhattacharya was disqualified because he ignored a black-orange flag (body-part problem). Raymond was leading from the start, and Vatcha was trailing him and that could have been the result had the unfortunate incident not stalled Raymond’s car.
In the semi-finals, held earlier in the evening, Amittrajit had a decent chance of moving up as top finisher into the final. He was leading the field and Vatcha was tailing him close. Away into the straight in the closing stages, Amittrajit made the cardila error of looking back. When you are leading, this is a no-no. The slight delay due to that saw the clever Vatcha zoom ahead easily. Vatcha never let this advantage go, till the final where he was again helped by Raymond’s misfortune.
Interestingly, this year the races were run anti-clockwise, against the lay of the double-decker track, somewhat.
In the junior class (13-15 years) Avay Jhunjhunwala, Chirag Malhotra and Malini Chakraborty (veteran rallyist Mitil’s daughter and the only girl in the boys’ field) finished in that order. Malini finished tops in the ladies’ class, beating Somonnita Ghosh and Richa Bhunja.
Another star sibling topped this evening, as Karan Goenka, son of former eastern region rally champion Vijay Goenka, won the cadet class (8-12 years) — a demo event last year.
In the celebrity race, the US consul general in Calcutta George Sibley beat the rest of the field to emerge best. BMSC president Rajat Majumdar managed a second spot.
