The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : Team Mohite triumphs

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Sport - Racing : Motor

Team Mohite triumphs

Special Correspondent

Nuvem (Goa): Breaking into the lead at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, Team Mohite from Kolhapur, emerged winner of the first ever 24-hour Endurance Karting race at the Go-A racing track atop the Verna hill here.

The members of the Mohite team are six-times INRC champion Ameya Walvalkar, Adumber Hede, Rounak Patil, Jigar Muni, Chittesh Mandody and Siddharth Shah. The team completed 2,298 laps driving a cumulative distance of 1,080 kilometres in the 24-hour span, a fantastic triumph for both the drivers and karts.

The JK Tyre 24 hours Enduro kart race began at 5 p.m. on Saturday with Team Amaron taking the initial lead. The lead changed hands five times with Team Hakone (Mumbai), Speed Arcee Racing, Speed Rayo Racing and finally Mohites all being leaders at some stage of the race.

Team Hakone forged a long lead late last night but ran into mechanical problems with their Kart and dropped to last place trailing by almost 200 laps on Sunday morning. The team had some consolation by making up about 80 laps at the end of the race.

No looking back

The eventual winner Team Mohite nosed into the lead after fifteen hours and never looked back after gaining the lead. For nine hours after that Team Mohite and Team Speed Rayo Racing disputed the issue with Rayo Racing closing the initial gap of 13 laps down to four laps.

Team captain Rayomand Banajee who drove for almost about nine hours of the total 24-hour race made a desperate bid to tilt the scales but failed in his endeavour. Seasoned karter Ameya Valwalkar and the others in the team ensured that there were no break-downs and held on to the winning spot.

The tracking of the Karts throughout the 24- hour race was done by Farhan Vohra and his crew at Mingo Motor Sports. The Chennai based team used the same equipment being deployed in the F1 races. The software developed by AMB IT uses a transponder and a decoder to track the karts.

The Minister for Power for Goa, Alexio Sequeira along with Narain Karthikeyan and Armaan Ebrahim gave away the prizes.

The results:

1. Team Mohite (Ameya Walvalkar, Adumber Hede, Rounak Patil, Jigar Muni, Chittesh Mandody and Siddharth Shah) 2,298 laps (24:00:16.202), 2. Speed Rayo Racing (Rayomand Banajee, Abbas Ghaddiyally, Murtuza Bootwala, Danesh Banajee, Vishruth Sharma, Sunny Bhagnani, Steve Hodges Stand-by) 2,288 laps (24:00:25.458), 3. Kart More Racing (Mix Malysia) (Matthijis Hoitnik, Mikko Petteri Nassi, Ryan Andrew Mumford, Lim Dao Wei, Mohammed Bin Fauzy, Mohammed Rohairijaz) 2,284 laps (24:0031.372).

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