Home MRF Challenge Fittipaldi secures MRF crown with win before Picariello dominates finale

Fittipaldi secures MRF crown with win before Picariello dominates finale

by Peter Allen
MRF Challenge

Photo: MRF Racing

Pietro Fittipaldi wrapped up the MRF Challenge title with victory in the third race of the weekend at Chennai, before Alessio Picariello dominated the series finale.

Fittipaldi led the first of Sunday’s two races from pole position, as a tangle behind between Nerses Isaakyan and Enzo Bortoleto brought out the safety car.

After the restart, Fittipaldi and Harrison Newey pulled away from the pack as they did in race one.

Newly-signed Formula V8 3.5 driver Fittipaldi won by just over a second as he secured the championship crown, while Formula 3 recruit Newey claimed his third straight second-place.

Race two winner Nikita Troitskiy held off Tatiana Calderon?for third place, while?Mick Schumacher similarly kept?Picariello at bay for fifth.

Indian driver Karthik Tharani – who won both races in the domestic MRF F1600 series this wekeend – ran inside the top eight before retiring, with?Max Fewtrell taking seventh ahead of?Aleksanteri Huovinen,?Dylan Young and?Arjun Nardendran.

Picariello had reverse-grid pole for the finale and pulled away from Schumacher and the rest to win by 16 seconds, a fitting end to the campaign for a driver who won half of the 10 races he entered after joining the series at the second round.

Schumacher remained ahead in a race-long battle with Calderon, Troitsky and Fittipaldi to score second place.

Calderon took third to secure the runner-up spot in the championship ahead of Troitskiy, who dropped behind Fittipaldi to fifth in the race after running off track.

Fewtrell took sixth ahead of Young, Newey, Tarun Reddy and Bortoleto.