New Delhi / Kolhapur, September 18: The 5th round of the JK Tyre Rotax Max Karting Challenge was held at the new karting track in Kholapur. The track was a very challenging track and the crowd support was tremendous.

Team Meco Racing had a field day at the final round of the JK Tyre Rotax Max Karting Challenge with 3 of its drivers winning the championship in the Mini Max, Junior and Senior Classes.

Vishnu Prasad in the Mini Max Class stole the show with a sterling performance by winning the heats and the Finals to comfortably win the championship for the 2nd year in succession. Parth Gorphade, the local lad from Kholapur was expected to be the favorite as he had more experience on his home track and the support of a very experienced Malaysian crew.

However, Vishnu stood up to the challenge and with some shrewd engineering skills from his mentor and driver coach, Akbar Ebrahim dominated the proceedings by qualifying on Pole and running away with all the races. Parth Gorphade who hounded Vishnu throughout the year, had a tough weekend with mechanical gremlins and had to fight hard to stave off a fighting Nikhil Kashyap and Shashank Shnakar. Parth Gorphade finished 2nd in the Championship while Shashank Shankar drom Chennai finished 3rd in the Championship.

Karan Goenka from Karnataka who was leading the junior championship ahead of Mohit Ahuja from Mumbai almost handed over the championship to Mohit with some silly mistakes and in the process managed to topple his kart into the pit lane in the Heats. However he pulled himself together in the Finals and thanks to a penalty levied on Mohit for rash driving, Karan finished first in the Junior Category to finally win the Championship quite comfortably. However, Mohit Ahuja managed the fastest lap in the junior category.

Aditya Akkineni from Hyderabad won the senior class championship comfortably with Aditya Patel from Chennai coming 2nd and Akhil Kushlani from Hyderabad coming 3rd.Aditya qualified on Pole for the final round with Patel in 2nd and Khushlani in 3rd followed by seasoned driver Ameya Walavalkar from Mumbai in 4th.

Akkineni won the first heat comfortably, but became cautious once the skies opened up and settled for 2nd and 3rd places in the Pre Finals and Finals to thereby comfortably win the Championship.

Aditya Patel drove a good race in the Pre Finals and made a good move on Akhil Kushlani to take the lead, but as the pass was being executed, Kushlani bumped him off in a very rough manner, which prompted the stewards to exclude Kushlani from the Pre Final race. This allowed Ameya to take a free path to move into the lead and win the Pre Final race. Ameya drove a good final race starting from 1st on the grid and won the Final race. The final Championship standings for the seniors saw Akkineni win the Championship with Patel coming 2nd and Khushlani coming 3rd.

The winners of the Junior and Senior categories will now represent India in the Rotax Max World Finals scheduled to be held in Portugal on November 18, 2006.

The Rotax Max Indian Challenge is sponsored by JK Tyres and promoted by Meco Motorsports.


Winners of JK Tyre Rotax Max Karting Challenge 2006:-
Senior Category- Aditya Akkineni
Mini Max Class- Vishnu Prasad
Junior championship- Karan Goenka