Parth Ghorpade, a budding Indian racing talent, emerged victorious at the 2012 Formula Pilota Championship. Ghorpade walked away with a top position and a second place in the Asian category in the championship held at Ordos International circuit. Among the three races that he participated, the young racing driver managed to bag 5th, 2nd and 1st spots. In the series of Asian category, Ghorpade is currently perched on the second position owing to his first title that he won in six races.
Earlier, he qualified for the races 1 and 3 by finishing 6th and 5th respectively. Parth also qualified for the Race 2 grid by finishing at 3rd; apparently the race 2 grid is determined by the order of fastest laps set in race 1. Coming to overall category, Ghorpade managed to claim 6th, 3rd and 2nd positions in Race 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
Struggling to get acclimated with his car, the race driver had a slow start at the race event. The driver was tweaking with his car to get it to turn into corners smoothly but the way he was driving, it seemed that the process was not easy. Ghorpade was at the bottom of the grid with 5 minutes remaining in the end of race, however, the driver made a speedy comeback to finish at 6th. Considering the fact that overtaking at Ordos International Circuit is an uphill task, a good qualifying position always counts.
Parth was finally able to customise the car as per his requirements and had a speedy performance in Race 1 even though he managed to finish only at 6th. At the same time, he recorded the 3rd fastest lap time to qualify for a good slot in Race 2, which turned out to be a decent start for him, grabbing the 3rd position. Further on, Parth delivered his best performance of the season in Race 3, where he overtook three cars ahead of him at 5th position to bag the 2nd position. Had there been couple of laps more left in the race, he would have emerged as the winner.
Clearly elevated by the performance after a slow start, Parth stated, “We went the wrong way on the car set-up for qualifying and paid the price for it. For the race we went back to the basic set-up and this made the car a lot more comfortable to drive. Overtaking here is always hard so I finished in the same position I started in for Race 1 even though I was faster than the cars ahead of me. In Race 2 the car felt really good and I managed to finish on the podium which was great for the team after all the work they put in overnight. Race 3 was probably my best of the season so far as I fought from 5th position to finish in 2nd place overall and take the win in the Asian category.”
He further added, “The more I drive the car the more comfortable I feel in it and this gives me great confidence for the second half of the season. I am thrilled with my performance this weekend and more importantly the support the entire Eurasia Motorsport team has given me. I would also like to thank my sponsors Karvy and Flameback Lodges for supporting me.”
All of 18 years, Parth Ghorpade happens to be a five time National Karting Champion, who was also the runner up in the first ever Volkswagen Polo Cup held in 2010 in India and has completed Renault F4 series in 2011 with top 5 positions several times.
Formula Pilota Championship was initiated in Asia back in 2011, close on the heels of highly successful Formula Abarth in Europe. The new series, which is also known as Formula Pilota China, serves as a platform to sync the Asian entry-level formula racing in tune with Europe, providing completely identical platform and racing cars within an economical budget.
