Chennai, January 23: Despite a short turnover time of little over a fortnight between rounds, the MRF MMSC fmsci Indian National Car Racing Championship 2025 boasts of 68 entries across all categories as the season is nicely set up for an exciting climax at the Madras International Circuit, here this weekend.
The fourth and final round of the championship, to be run on January 24-25, has the two MRF single-seater categories, the Formula 2000 and Formula 1600, yet again headlining a card of 13 races. Both these categories comprise of highly competitive bunch of teenagers with two young guns from Pune, Arjun Chheda (MRF F2000) and Sai Shiva Sankaran (MRF F1600) firmly in front, though they can ill afford to be complacent given that their main rivals and Bengalureans, Ishaan Madesh and Arjun Nair, respectively, are very much in the title hunt.
The other feature of the weekend’s races is the triple-header in the premier Indian Touring Cars category where the top four, led by the privateer from Lonavala, Dhruv Chavan, are separated by just 24 points, with a maximum of 75 points on offer in this final round.
While the focus has been on the Big Three – defending champion Biren Pithawalla (N1 Racing), Ritesh Rai (Buzzing Hornet) and former multiple champion Arjun Balu (Race Concepts) – Chavan has been flying under the radar. He is still to win a race in nine starts, but with five podiums and finishing all the races so far, the 22-year-old has quietly accumulated points to place himself on top of the championship standings.
The others, despite possessing faster cars, have not quite matched Chavan’s consistency. Pithawalla has two retirements to Balu’s three (all in the previous round) while Rai skipped the entire Round-1 but won five of the six races which put him contention despite also sitting out one of the three races in the previous round.
In sharp contrast, Bengaluru’s Rithvik Thomas (Race Concepts) and Sri Lankan Kesara Gadage (Red Line Racing India) are comfortably placed at the head of the points table in the Indian Junior Touring Cars and Super Stock categories, respectively. Coimbatore’s 80-year-old Vidyaprakash Damodaran (Team Performance Racing), for whom age is not an impediment, leads the championship in the ITC 1625 class.
In the MRF Saloons (Toyota Etios), the trio of Akshay Muralidharan (Coimbatore), Mohammed Arafath (Chennai) and Tarushi Vikram (Chikmagaluru), the only female driver on the grid, are the front-runners with 41 points spearing them.
Perhaps the most competitive category in the championship is the Formula LGB 1300, made up of Open and Junior classes, both led by Ernakulam’s 19-year-old Joel Joseph who has emerged as the lead driver in his team, DTS Racing. He has his work cut out though as his team-mate, Vinith Kumar from Tirupur, is very much in his rearview mirror.
Among the busiest competitors will be those in the Volkswagen Polo Cup which has four races scheduled unlike the triple-headers in the other categories. With a maximum of 100 points up for grabs, the VW Polo Cup championship is wide open. Theoretically, almost all the eight drivers on the grid have a chance to win the title.
Chairman of the Meet Vicky Chandhok said: “It has been a long season with its quota of ups and downs. There is still plenty to play for this weekend. For all that, the grids reflect a great mix of youth and experience resulting in some thrilling races in the previous rounds. The ones to watch out for are the touring car races which have a combined grid of 20-plus cars and the Formula LGB 1300 which has witnessed some of the closest wheel-to-wheel racing this season. So, there is plenty to look forward to this weekend.”
