The Indian Racing Festival (IRF) 2025 delivered another action-packed day at the Kari Motor Speedway on Sunday. On day 1, Raoul Hyman dominated the IRL Driver A Race, setting the tone for the festival. On day 2, fans witnessed Sai Sanjay from Speed Demons Delhi take an impressive victory in the IRL Driver B Race in Coimbatore.
Right off the start, we saw the front row starters, Akshay Bohra and Neel Jani, battle it out for the lead into turn one. Bohra came out on top while Neel Jani dropped below the top 3. Just as Bohra was looking good to separate himself from the rest of the pack, but suddenly lost pace and fell behind Sai Sanjay and the top 5.
Sai was loosely followed by the Goa Aces driver, Fabienne Wohlwend. One of the biggest highlights of the race was the battle for 3rd place. With Akash Gowda leading Tijil Rao and Neel Jani, there was only one lap to go. Rao from the Chennai Turbo Riders was able to make a move on Gowda to take 3rd place.
However, with just a few more corners to go, Rao left the gap for Gowda and Jani to get past him. But the battle didn’t end there.
In the last couple of corners, Neel Jani from the Kichcha’s Kings Bengaluru, was able to make a desperate and successful move to take the final podium position from Akash Gowda.
At the start of the race, a 3rd place finish would not have been ideal for Jani. But after his power failure on lap 1, his P3 finish was an impressive comeback from the Swiss driver. With all this drama happening behind him, Sai Sanjay cruised on to take victory in Race 2 of Round 1 at the Kari Motor Speedway.
“I think we had the pace all weekend. We were quickest on Friday, just unfortunate in qualifying where I messed up a bit and we ended up P3. But I knew we had the pace, big time. The team did an amazing job with the car. The team are now focussed on the next round going to Chennai,“ said Sai Sanjay.
Round 1 – Indian Racing League (Group B) Provisional Results
Winner: Sai Sanjay (Speed Demons Delhi) – 26:51.373
Runner-up: Fabienne Wohlwend (Goa Aces) – 26:59.120
2nd Runner-up: Neel Jani (Kichcha’s Kings Bengaluru) – 27:10.506
Formula 4 Indian Championship
Day 2 of the Indian Racing Festival saw the FIA Certified Formula 4 cars battle it out on a wet track for the first time this year. Sunday comprised a total of 2 races for the Championship.
Race 1 saw Vasilis Apostolidis from Greece, representing the Hyderabad Black Birds convert his pole position start to a race win. Wian Boshoff had a challenging race 1. He had a strong qualifying session that placed him to start P3 in the race, but was not able to capitalize on it. He finished 5th in the race.
Shane Chandaria from the Chennai Turbo Riders went on to claim 2nd after a close battle towards the end of the race with Ishaan Madesh who finished 3rd.
“The race was very good. I was stressed a lot, raining all the way. It was a hard race, I was on the wet, but it was drying at the end, and I was faster than I wanted to be,” commented Vasilis Apostolidis.
Race 2 brought a better result for Kolkata Royal Tigers’ Ishaan Madesh, who got a mega launch off the start from P4 to P1.
While he was able to keep the lead for the rest of the race, the drivers behind him didn’t give him any room to make mistakes. He ended up finishing just 1 second ahead of French driver, Sachel Rotge. Vasilis Apostolidis finished 3rd in Race 2 after fighting from P5 on the grid.
Dhruvh Goswami dominated the LGBF4 category on the first day at the Kari Motor Speedway. However, his win was taken away after a technical infringement was found during scrutineering, promoting Diljit as the winner in both race 1 and race 2.
In race 3, Dhruvh Goswami once again got in front to control the pace and never looked back. Behind him, Saran Vikram Tmars and Raghul Rangasamy fought wheel-to-wheel in a thrilling contest, eventually crossing the line P2 and P3 respectively. These are the provisional results for race 3, awaiting scrutineering.
