Rahil comes up trumps in quality field, Ahamed, Anfal win

The 23-year-old Rahil marked his comeback, after a season’s absence, with a superb win in the Prostock 301-400cc category. He clocked a timing of 11 minutes, 18.000 seconds to finish ahead of championship leader and veteran Rajini Krishnan (RACR Castrol Power Racing), and TVS Racing’s Deepak Ravikumar.

Rajini and Deepak finished the race with timings of 11:18.246 and 11:18.340 respectively. Ahamed (11:44.563) registered his first win of the season in the Prostock 165cc category as he finished in front of teammates Deepak (11:44.697) and defending champion Jagan Kumar (11:45.057) for a podium sweep for TVS Racing.

Rockstar Racing’s Anfal Akdhar clinched his second win of the season in the Novice (Stock 165cc) category that had a massive grid of 38 riders. Rahil, who missed the 2020 season due to family business commitments, rode a near flawless race on a KTM 390, starting from his maiden pole position in the category to beat a quality field.

Except for running wide in the penultimate lap to drop to the second spot, Rahil dictated the pace for much of the six-lap race. Rahil made a decisive pass on Rajini, who had started from P6, at Turn-9 on the last lap for a deserving win. Ahamed survived a contact with pole-sitter Deepak on the first lap and staged a remarkable recovery to move to the front of the pack in the Prostock 165cc category race.

Earlier in the day, Anfal (13:03.524) snatched a thrilling, last gasp win over Allwin Xavier (13:03.577) of Sparks Racing with just 500th of a second separating the two on the finish line. Finishing about four seconds behind the pair was Sarvesh Balappa (13:07.658) from Sparks Racing.