West triumphs at Asia Road Racing Championship

Chennai : Anthony West scored his second win of the weekend while destroying the premier SuperSport 600cc field to stamp his class and authority on the fourth round of the FIM Asia Road Racing Championship (ARRC) here on Sunday.

Such was the 37-year-old's supremacy that he won by over seven seconds while recording his fourth win of the season which put him in line for his maiden ARRC title.

While West cruised to victory untroubled and unchallenged on his Yamaha, Tomoyoshi Koyoma (MUSASHi Boon Siew Honda) won a thrilling scrap with fellow-Japanese Taiga Hada (Idemitsu Honda Racing India), to grab the second spot.

For the 19-year old Hada, who became an instant favourite with the large crowd, it was his second podium of the weekend.

Rafid Topan Sucipto (Yamaha) and Andy Muhammad Fadly (Kawasaki) delivered a 1-2 for Indonesia in the Asia Production 250cc race ahead of Thailand's Anupab Sarmoon (Yamaha) in a near photo-finish with barely three-tenth of a second separating the trio.

For the two Indian riders in this category, Rajiv Sethu and Anish Damodara Shetty, it was a disappointing finish as they rode in at 16th and 19th places respectively.

Among the most notable podium finishers of the day was 14-year old Australian Travis Hall who fought his way to third place, his first podium of the season, in the second race of the highly competitive Underbone 150cc class while Malaysians Ahmad Fazli Sham and Md. Helmi Azman took the top two positions.

Bengaluru's Abhishek Vasudev and Aravind Balasubramaniam (Chennai) shared the honours in the two Idemitsu Honda India Talent Cup races.

However, in the championship stakes, Coimbatore's Senthil Kumar, with two second-place finishes, moved to the top of the leaderboard with 99 points, ahead of Vasudev (88) and Anish Shetty (86) who sat out both the races due to injury.

The TVS One-Make Championship (Apache RR310) double-header dished out close races as Vivek Pillai and PM Soorya, both from Chennai, won one apiece. The victory helped Pillai (94 points) close in on championship leader Deepak Ravikumar (98), who finished second and fifth in the two races. Soorya managed to move up to mid-table with a tally of 33.