Practice report

Indian Open Wheel MRF 1600: Chennai III

Tharani tops Saturday morning practice

Championship leader Karthik Tharani topped the morning practice on Saturday in the fourth round of the National Racing Championship in Chennai.

Darshan Chokhani

Edited: Jul 25, 2015, 8:11 AM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Karthik Tharani

Niranjan Todkari

Arjun Narendran

Goutham Parekh

Arjun Narendran

Jai Sampath

Tharani ended at the top of the timesheets in the 30 minutes free practice session after timing his best lap right at the end of the session.

His time of 1:42.576 was good enough to stay ahead of his rival Goutham Parekh by 0.493s. Parekh, for a brief period headed the table but Tharani was quick to dislodge him from the top.

Tharani was the only driver to dip in the 1:42's out of the nine drivers competing. The top three was completed by Arjun Narendran.

With the track temperature hovering around 51C, the drivers are concerned with the tyre performance and managing them will be key this weekend. It will be a challenge for the drivers especially during the race.

"The track looks pretty hot; I was running a qualifying simulation. We were not chasing time but it feels great to be the quickest," Tharani said to Motorsport.com after practice.

The rest of the field were separated by more than a second from Tharani as Tejas Ram slotted in at fourth and Anshul Shah at fifth, who also timed his best lap on his last lap of the session.

"I had a bit of an oversteer issue with the car and that is partly due to the extreme temperatures. I ended only 0.3s off third place Narendran which is positive," Ram said.

The top nine was completed by Chetan Korada at sixth, actor/racer Jai Sampath seventh, Niranjan Todkari eighth and nearly ten seconds off the pace ninth was Utkarsh Singh.

Qualifying is slotted for 14:30 local time start.

Pos Driver Time/Delay 1 Karthik Tharani 1:42.576 2 Goutham Parekh 0.493 3 Arjun Narendran 0.855 4 Tejas Ram 1.275 5 Anshul Shah 2.800 6 Chetan Korada 3.404 7 Jai Sampath 4.048 8 Niranjan Todkari 4.102 9 Utkarsh Singh 9.790

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article McCumbee, Bell top Continental Tire qualifying

Next article Espargaro scorches to Suzuka 8 Hours pole for Yamaha

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

"Slippery as hell" – Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar explain the "extreme" challenge of Mexico

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Mexican GP

2 min

"Slippery as hell" – Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar explain the "extreme" challenge of Mexico

Pato O'Ward questions promoters in Mexico after IndyCar Barcelona race confirmation

IndyCar

Indy IndyCar 12 min

Pato O'Ward questions promoters in Mexico after IndyCar Barcelona race confirmation

Sergio Perez praises Colton Herta impact - but has no say over 2027 Cadillac F1 team-mate choice

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Mexican GP

1 h

Sergio Perez praises Colton Herta impact - but has no say over 2027 Cadillac F1 team-mate choice

Why “ignorance is a superpower” for Kimi Antonelli, according to Daniel Ricciardo

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1

Mexican GP

2 h

Why “ignorance is a superpower” for Kimi Antonelli, according to Daniel Ricciardo

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts