Chennai : 29th November 2009

Midway through the fifth edition of the JK Tyre FMSCI Junior Cup 2009, Steve Hodges of Mumbai displayed lot of skills in gaining for honors though Vikas Anand with his planned and steady driving progressed to the top spot at the end of five races of the ten race annual championship at the MMST track at suburban Irungaatukottai near Chennai here today.

In all counts, the five races that were gone through so far has proved to a win-win situation for city Wallace Sports and its drivers maintaining the first four or five positions. In the remaining races it would mean that a driver amongst Vikas Anand, Steve Hodges and K.Vinoth from their team would be the Championship driver and to gain entry into higher levels of racing. Thanks to the year long decisions of the sponsors, JK Tyre, the winner of Junior Cup gets promoted to the JK Tyre FMSCI National Racing Championship for a free drive scholarship in the whole of 2010 season in Formula LGB Swift Class while the second and third podium finishers gets to drive one race in next years championship. This is being done for the last four years by the JK Tyre in promoting the drivers and development of the sport.

As for the drivers reaping good harvest amongst the 15 drivers in the championship, Vikash Anand and Steve Hodges have proved their mettle in great measure in different ways.

Vikash Anand, who is presently occupying the top spot with 44 points, a drift six points ahead of Steve Hodges (38) has an edge but they would have to weed away the challenges from K.Vinoth, also from Wallace Sport, an equally potential driver, who is in third sport with 29 pts ahead of Ram’s Racings Karthik Krishna (26) for top honors in the remaining five races to be gone through on December 5 and 6, 2009.

Talking about their experiences in the five races that were held so far this year, 22-year-old I.T.Graduate, Steve Hodges, gave credit to the engineers in the team for their efforts in rectifying the ‘gasket’ problem in the car that he had envisaged in yesterday’s two races.

“This was the main reason that I was able to come up the ladder of honors. On request about the gasket problem, the engineers got the car readied well in time for today’s races. It is not about skill alone to get on top. It is a matter of coordinating the car and the skills”, said Hodges, who has had greater experience in driving Formula Rolon Chevrolet car in last year’s JK Tyre FMSCI National Racing championship.

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