Home MRF Challenge Sowery and Reddy win first two races at Losail

Sowery and Reddy win first two races at Losail

by Aditya Banerjee
Photo: MRF Racing

Photo: MRF Racing

British driver Toby Sowery and Indian driver Tarun Reddy shared the spoils in races one and two of the first round of the 2014-15 MRF Challenge season at Losail, held on Friday.

Race one saw an extremely dominant display from F3 Cup champion Sowery, who won the 15-lap race by 18 seconds. GP3 driver Ryan Cullen finished a distant second.

South African driver Kyle Mitchell took third, holding off a late charge from Mathias Lauda. Russian karter Nikita Mazepin was fifth ahead of Reddy in sixth.

Vikash Anand and Dylan Young came home in seventh and eighth places. The top ten was brought up by Raj Bharath and Freddie Hunt, both of whom were forced to start from the pitlane after stalling on the formation lap.

Race 2, which was run to a reverse-grid format for the top six, was much closer. Reddy kept the lead at the start, but came under pressure from Mazepin soon. The Russian consistently put pressure the Indian, but despite getting briefly alongside on lap nine, had to be content with second.

Sowery came home third after a stirring recovery drive, having dropped to tenth at the first corner after running wide. He managed to carve his way through the field, and clinched third place by just pipping Mathias Lauda to the line in a photo-finish.

Mitchell held off Cullen for fifth, while Bharath, Pedro Cardoso, Anand and Vinicius Papareli completed the top ten.

Race 1
Pos. Driver Time/Gap
1 Toby Sowery 15 laps in 30:58.927
2 Ryan Cullen +18.713
3 Kyle Mitchell +20.417
4 Mathias Lauda +22.883
5 Nikita Mazepin +24.716
6 Tarun Reddy +26.533
7 Vikash Anand +33.245
8 Dylan Young +33.291
9 Raj Bharath +33.776
10 Freddie Hunt +35.653
11 Pedro Cardoso +44.927
12 Laura Tillett +1:10.649
13 Lee Keshav +1:22.467
Not classified
Vinicius Papareli +6 laps
Race 2
Pos. Driver Time/Gap
1 Tarun Reddy 15 laps in 30:26.545
2 Nikita Mazepin +1.655
3 Toby Sowery +4.493
4 Mathias Lauda +4.561
5 Kyle Mitchell +9.876
6 Ryan Cullen +10.794
7 Raj Bharath +12.126
8 Pedro Cardoso +12.739
9 Vikash Anand +14.382
10 Vinicius Papareli +19.855
11 Dylan Young +27.566
12 Freddie Hunt +34.490
13 Laura Tillett +35.269
14 Lee Keshav +35.771