Team Bangalore Racing Stars (BRS) outshone the rest of the playing field by securing victories in both races on Day 1 of Round 1 of the X1 Racing League.
After nearly two years of planning & conceptualising, the X1 Racing League, founded by Indian racing veterans Aditya Patel and Armaan Ebrahim, finally kicked off at the Buddh International Circuit on 30th November. Spread over two days, the first round (Round 1) consisted of four races (two races on each day). Day 1 (Saturday) started off with a qualifying session, followed by Race 1 and Race 2. For Race 2, the start order followed a reverse-grid pattern (based on the final classification of Race 1). Both Race 1 and Race 2 ran for 30-minutes each.
As for the teams, Bangalore Racing Stars (BRS) topped the qualifying session, with car #18 (Arjun Maini and Oliver Webb) taking away the pole position from teams DG Racing Ahmedabad (P2) and Mumbai Falcons (P3). For DG, car #54 (Krishnaraaj Mahadik and Rahel Frey) took P2 and for Mumbai, it was car #1 (Kush Maini and Pippa Mann) in P3. While Driver 1 started the race, Driver 2 took charge of the car when the driver swap window became active (only between 12th & 17th minute of each race).
From the opening moments of Race 1, the battle for the top three was among Bangalore, Mumbai and Ahmedabad. However, Bangalore Racing Stars' Arjun Maini and Webb (Car #18) put in some really strong laps and emerged as the victors. Behind them, DG Racing Ahmedabad's Mahadik and Frey (Car #54) crossed the line in P2, while the final spot on the podium was claimed by Mumbai Falcons' Karthik Tharani and Mikkel Jenson (Car #2). One car from team Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad each also got a DNF.
Despite the reverse-grid order in effect, Bangalore continued its dominant run and secured a 1-2 finish in Race 2, with Arjun Maini and Webb (Car #18) ending the day with another victory. BRS' other driver pairing, in car # 7 (Nayan Chatterjee and Michelle Gatting), crossed the finish line in second. Thanks to both cars of Mumbai Falcons (#1 & #2) receiving a 20-second post-race penalty for a false start, DG Racing Ahmedabad's Mahadik and Frey (Car #54) were bumped up to P3 in the final classification.
As for team AD Racing Delhi, their maiden X1 Racing season could not have started off on a more unfortunate note. Due to technical difficulties, the team could only manage to run one car on Saturday and it too suffered DNFs in both Race 1 and Race 2. Bad news continued to mar the team's progress as both their international drivers (Mathias Lauda and Christina Nielsen) seem to have backed out from the championship. For now, Indian racer Mira Erda has replaced Nielsen.
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