Sixteen-year-old
Indian racer Tarun Reddy achieved his best racing weekend internationally with
a double podium finish in the UK Formula Renault Championship. The youngster
finished 2nd, 3rd and 4th at Snetterton in England. Tarun, who is also leading
the MRF 1600 National Racing Championship, went fastest in Friday practice at a
circuit he is visiting for the first time.
The Chennai lad’s second place in race one was
his best result to date in the UK. He backed it up with two more excellent
performances in his MGR Motorsport car. This came on top of his triple win the
weekend before on home ground in the Formula MRF 1600 series. Reddy qualified fourth for races one and
three, and sixth for race two. He jumped to 2nd position on lap 4 and shook off
a challenge from Italian Matteo Ferrer, a race winner this season. He then
consolidated second place behind triple race winner Pietro Fittipaldi, the
grandson of Formula 1 legend and two-time world champion Emerson Fittipaldi.
In
the second race, Reddy made a terrific start to move from sixth to third. He
got a good start and passed three drivers in the first two corners. “That put
me into third, and from then on I drove a consistent race and kept with the drivers
in front of me,” Tarun said after the race.
In
the final race too, Tarun made progress at the start of the final race of the
weekend, rising from fourth to third when he passed another race winner this
season, Piers Hickin. But Hickin moved back ahead on lap four, and Tarun could
only finish fourth. “I had another good start and tried to lunge two drivers at
the hairpin, but I only got Hickin,” he said. “The problem was I damaged my
wing in race two, so that caused some heavy wear with the tyres. So for race
three my tyres were finished, and also I was losing power over the races.
Hickin came flying past me on the straight, and fourth was all I could manage,”
he said in a press statement.
Now there are three weeks before the
penultimate round of the championship, at Croft on September 20 and 21. “We’ve
had a day of testing at Croft and we seemed quite fast,” said Tarun, adding,
“It would be a good place for my first win in the UK and I will give it 100 per
cent!”
Tarun Reddy’s manager, reigning Formula MRF
2000 champion Rupert Svendsen-Cook, stated that Tarun’s three wins in the MRF
1600 round at Chennai allowed him to come to Snetterton with lots of
confidence. “He had a good shakedown test to get used to the Renault again.
Qualifying was a bit of a missed opportunity after the pace he had on Friday,
but he made up for it in the races and raced back to the front,” he said.
Picture of Tarun Reddy, courtesy Jakob Ebrey