Hede and Diego take top honours at inaugural Volkswagen Polo R Cup 2012

The battle lines were drawn as 2012 Polo R Cup got underway at the Kari Motor Speedway with the all new TSI engined Polo’s taking their positions. Avdumber Hede was the man on pole followed by debutant A. Sandeep Kumar and Anthony George. Avdumber got a good start and led into the first corner followed by Mihir and Sandeep. Avdumber managed to pull out a 2 second gap by lap 7 and was looking on course for a comfortable win. This changed when a collision on lap 8 between Siddharth Sharma and Tabish Khan brought out the safety car first before the race was red-flagged.

This led to the second part of the race being a three lap shootout. At the restart, Mihir got a quick start and beat Avdumber into the first corner and managed to keep that lead crossing the finish line in first place. However the rules state that the aggregate time has to be taken from the first and second part of the race. This meant that Avdumber finished ahead of Mihir on aggregate time to win the first race of the season. Behind them Munjal Savla charged up the field from 10th on the grid to finish in 4th position, followed by Prashant Tharani Singh, Mexican driver Deigo Duez and Alisha Abdullah. Ajay Kini finished in 8th position and will hence start from the pole position in Race Two owing to reverse grid rule.

Round two saw Ajay Kini at the pole followed by Alisha Abdullah and Mexican Deigo Duez in third spot. As the lights went off, Diego jumped into the lead after passing both Ajay Kini and Alisha and comfortably maintained his lead till the end of the race. Behind him there was a close battle for second place with Alisha impressively holding her own ahead of Prashanth. Pole sitter Ajay could only manage 4th position after a poor start and spent most of the race holding off Mihir Dharkar. Experienced racer Ameya Walavalkar put on great performance by finishing 6th, after starting back in 12th position. The Mexican as expected was ecstatic after his win and mentioned that it was quite an experience and he was very thrilled with the result. He drove aggressively for the entire race and was very harsh on the tyres but was happy to have created a big gap between Alisha and himself.

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On the whole the 2012 Polo R Cup season has got onto a brilliant start. The drivers are loving the new 1.4 TSI petrol engines which are not only faster than last years diesel Polo’s but along with the automatic DSG gear box, differential locking and bigger front discs coupled with ABS are also a lot easier to drive especially for the new drivers. Lap times have reduced by over a second and a half compared to last years timings and the times between the drivers have reduced as well. What this means is that the 2012 Polo R Cup will not only be a lot more competitive but also a lot more interesting. 27th - 29th will see round 2 at Coimbatore again. Keep watching this space for a race by race update.