Racing Within A Hair's Breadth

The season finale of JKNRC 2018 witnessed some close-fought battles in the Euro JK 18 series, with Karthik Tharani taking home the championship while Joseph Matthew won this year’s Suzuki Gixxer Cup.

- Divyank Kushagra Bansal

After witnessing some gruelling races over the past three rounds at the Kari Motor Speedway in Coimbatore, the 2018 season of the JKNRC went to the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida for its fourth and final round. The fight for this year’s Euro JK 18 title had been really close with Ashwin Datta emerging as the championship leader at the end of round three, sitting at 74 points. Just six points behind him, Chennai’s Karthik Tharani found himself in the second place. The top three were rounded off by Nayan Chatterjee, who had a total of 66 points.

However, day one of round four was not favourable for Datta, as he only managed to secure fifth-place and eighth-place finishes in the day’s two races. To make matters worse, Datta was handed a 10-second penalty by the race stewards for an alleged jump start in race two. In the end, day one clearly belonged to both Tharani and Chatterjee, who managed to secure podium finishes in both the races. In race one, Tharani took the top spot followed closely by Chatterjee in second, and in race two, it was Chatterjee who claimed victory. Arya Singh’s fighting spirit kept Tharani behind him, restricting Tharani to clinch third spot. Barring a few retirements, both races witnessed clean competition.