Fifth and final round of National Motorcycle Racing Championship to begin on Friday

Chennai: Over 100 entrants, representing 19 teams, will vie for top honours across 19 races when the fifth and final round of the three-day MMSC fmsci Indian National Motorcycle Racing Championship 2024 will be held at the Madras International Circuit starting from Friday. The three-day event will witness the formal coronation of National Champions in the five categories - Pro-Stock 301-400cc Open, Pro-Stock 165cc Open, Novice (Stock 165cc), Girls (Stock 165cc) and Stock 301-400cc Novice. A maximum of 52 points are on offer.

It will be no different in the Idemitsu Honda India Talent Cup and the TVS India One-Make Championship which have attracted a clutch of hand-picked talented riders who have greatly benefitted from focused training and nurturing by the country’s two top two-wheeler manufacturers.

The 2024 season which had a traditional start in June will be long remembered for the emergence of a new generation of talented and fearless riders who have taken the baton from their peers, thus ushering a new era in motorcycle racing in the country.

Undoubtedly, much of the attention has been on Pune’s Sarthak Chavan, who turns 18 at the end of this month, and 17-year-old Chiranth Vishwanath from Bengaluru. The pair was recruited by the TVS Racing team last season and since then, their performance graph has gone northwards.

Unfazed by grids containing multiple National champions and seasoned campaigners, Sarthak and Chiranth have scripted their own success stories marked by fierce, and at times unbridled, competition between themselves to excel in the two premier Pro-Stock categories.

Sarthak, having won seven of the eight races so far, needs only a handful of points in the final round to take the title in the Pro-Stock 301-400cc Open class. Further, Sarthak and Chiranth, are very much in the title hunt in the Pro-Stock 165cc Open where 10 times National champion and team-mate Jagan Kumar, probably in his swansong season, heads the leaderboard, with two wins and five podium finishes.

Another 17-year-old, Abdul Basim from Chennai in the Rockers Racing team livery, enjoys an insurmountable lead in the Novice (Stock 165cc) class, courtesy of seven wins in eight starts.

In contrast, Basim’s teammate Ryhana Bee, with three wins over two previous rounds, after switching teams, has given herself a chance to regain the title, though she has much work to do. Ryhana and her main rivals, Chennai school girl Rakshitha Dave (RACR Castrol Power1 Ultimate) and Jagathishree Kumaresan (One Racing) are separated by just four points going into the final round.

The title race in the Novice (Stock 301-400cc) class appears to be a straight fight between leader Kaushik Subbiah Ganesan (RACR Castrol Power1 Ultimate) and Raj Kumar (RDX Torque Racing).

Mohsin Paramban, the 22-year-old from Malappuram, has effectively sealed the championship in the NSF 250R class with five wins as he leads Bengaluru’s Prakash Kamath by 56 points.

Coimbatore’s Senthilkumar is involved in a three-cornered title fight in the Open (Apache RR310) class with two Chennai riders, Manoj Yesuadiyan and Jayanth P. while Bengaluru’s 22-year-old Harshith V. Bogar has one hand on the trophy in the Rookie category (Apache RTR 200). In the Girls segment (Apache RTR 200), Pune’s Saimah Ajaz Baig and S.P. Shuria from Trichy are locked in a close battle for the title.

Sarthak Chavan is also in line for the title in the TVS Electric RTE Open, following an unbeaten run, and needs only a couple of points from the lone race in the final round to bag the crown.