Nayan Chatterjee, Vishnu Prasad, Ashish Ramaswamy jump into lead

Nayan Chatterjee made it two from two to consolidate his lead in the second round of the 19th JK Tyre national racing championship at the Kari Motor Speedway near here on Sunday, winning both his Euro JK 16 races in blistering fashion.

In the LGB Formula 4 class, Vishnu Prasad had to work hard to take over the championship lead, taking his total to 36 with a 28-point haul from the weekend here.

Ashish Ramaswamy led from start to finish to maintain his total dominance in the JK Touring Cars category.

Nayan is the runaway leader now in the Euro JK 16 class, having won as many as four races so far to earn 58 points in his kitty, 10 clear of the second-placed Ananth Shanmugam. Dhruv Mohite is at third with 39 points.

On Saturday, Nayan had struggled, only managing a third place finish in the first two races. On Sunday, however, he was on fire, churning out lap after lap at high pace. He was virtually untouchable in the final race, even though the speedy Shanmugam kept at his heels all the way to the chequered flag.

Nayan got a lucky break in the first lap with Ajay Kini getting into a melee with Anindith Reddy and Karthik Tharani. He took advantage to open up a huge lead.

But Ananth, a driver from Karnataka, upped the ante in the latter part of the race and almost overtook Nayan in the final lap.

“Luckily, my car setup was good today and I held nerve,” Nayan said.

In the morning, Nayan was even more spectacular, streaking past one driver after another. He started fourth with the reverse grid coming into play to get the psychological edge over overnight leader Ananth. Akash Gowda and Kini didn’t have the pace to hold him off and yielded the lead by the first turn itself.