Photo: Indian F4
The third season of the centrally-run Indian Formula 4 championship has kicked off with a two-race round at Kari Motor Speedway.
There will be four further rounds, but the venues for the last two are yet to be confirmed.
Pre-season testing at Kari ran from Wednesday to Friday, and the fastest lap was a 1m07.52s by an unnamed driver. Clara Stiebleichinger was 0.109 seconds behind in second, and Sachel Rotge trailed 0.18s in third.
A pre-event test session followed on Saturday, and Ishaan Madesh set a 1m07.376s to pip Shane Chandaria to top spot by 0.04s.
There was a 0.224s gap to Saishiva Sankaran in third, and 0.434s to Vasilis Apostolidis in fourth. He was 0.022s ahead of USF2000 regular Wian Boshoff.
The season began on Sunday morning with a half-hour practice session, held in windy and wet conditions. It was topped by Apostolidis, who on his penultimate lap improved to 1m11.048s to lead Madesh by 0.392s.
The Ginetta Junior-experienced Ntiyiso Mabunda was third but 1.066s off the pace, and 0.015s split Sankaran and Luviwe Sambudla in fourth and fifth.
Qualifying ran with slick tyres on a dry track, but it remained windy. This time Apostolidis left it until his last lap to post the benchmark laptime, a 1m07.354s.
He was quickest by 0.174s over Sankaran, who also improved on their final lap, and 0.357s over Chandaria.
Boshoff was 0.546s off pole in fourth, and had a 0.099s gap to Sambudla. Three others were within a second of Apostolidis, and with only one lap on the board Rotge was a distant 12th. He earned his seat through Indian F4’s Global Shootout.
Grooved tyres were back on the cars for race one in the afternoon. The field tentatively slid through the opening lap, but the different lines taken helped displace water on the track surface and it dried out over the course of the race. The safety car was needed early on, but once the field was set free again Apostolidis streaked off into the distance.
Chandaria got into second early on and kept the position after the restart, albeit only by 0.18s after battling with Madesh. Sankaran had dropped all the way down to 10th before the safety car period, and after it could only recover to seventh.
Boshoff inherited third ahead of Sambudla and Madesh, but lost out to the latter and then was also passed by a charging Rotge who the championship named ‘driver of the day’.
It was fully dry for the start of the reversed-grid race two, and on slick tyres the field did a lot more battling. But when rain came, the safety car was soon needed too. At that point Madesh and Rotge were leading the way, and when racing resumed the field spread out before the track dried again slightly towards the end and the pace was lowered.
Madesh built a 1.885s gap over Rotge, and Apostolidis was faster than anyone as he rose to third to leave round one as points leader.
Results round-up
Race 1 (20 laps)
1 Vasilis Apostolidis 26m20.630s
2 Shane Chandaria +5.527s
3 Ishaan Madesh +5.707s
4 Sachel Rotge +9.779s
5 Wian Boshoff +11.002s
6 Ntiyiso Mabunda +13.351s
7 Saishiva Sankaran +13.903s
8 Ghazi Motlekar +21.557s
9 Clara Stiebleichinger +32.198s
10 Luviwe Sambudla +33.106s
Pole: Apostolidis, 1m07.354s
Fastest lap: Motlekar, 1m11.342s
Race 2 (21 laps)
1 Madesh 26m35.769s
2 Rotge +1.885s
3 Apostolidis +4.517s
4 Motlekar +5.161s
5 Chandaria +7.226s
6 Stiebleichinger +20.918s
7 Boshoff +21.249s
8 Annabel Kennedy +23.394s
9 Zakariya Mohammed +39.297s
10 Kareen Kaur +52.758s
FL: Apostolidis, 1m07.342s
Championship standings
1 Apostolidis 43 2 Madesh 40 3 Rotge 30 4 Chandaria 28 5 Motlekar 17 6 Boshoff 16 7 Stiebleichinger 10 8 Mabunda 8 9 Sankaran 6 10 Kennedy 4