Pattaya , Mumbai’s Kiaan Shah, representing Rayo Racing, produced his best result in international karting, with a second place finish in round 2 of the RMC Asia Trophy here.
The 15-year-old clocked 51.218s on the 1.2 km Bira circuit, just 0.118 seconds behind Thailand’s Pannu Stienmonkong, who was the fastest in the qualifying.
Kiaan started fourth in heat 2, but lost a place at the start. He soon overtook Japanese racer Shun Sekiguchi and Eason Tseng of Chinese Taipei. Next, he got past Stienmonkong and finished second behind Thailand’s Toby Gale.
Disaster struck in heat 3, when Kiaan’s engine shut off while running third. A quick-thinking Kiaan found the problem and fixed back a wire. But still finished last.
Kiaan started seventh in the super heat and drove a brilliant race to finish second. An accident caused a full course yellow, allowing paramedics to attend an injured racer. Rain and chaos ensued, once the race resumed, Kiaan fell to sixth spot after a mistake, but recovered to finish fourth.
The result from all heats decided the starting for the final. Kiaan had a bad start from fifth and lost a place. He made an extremely daring move and moved to fourth on lap 1.
Kiaan was unable to close the gap with the leader and eventually finished second, 3.8 seconds behind Gale, who won. Stienmonkong was third. The same grid contested the Thailand Championship and therefore Kiaan won two trophies, one for the Asian Championship and one for the Thai.
“I am very happy how I drove this weekend. I had a bit of a pace deficit in Round 1, but now I am up there. The team did a fantastic job with the kart and I would like to thank everyone,” said Kiaan.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
