Coimbatore, Aug 22 (IANS): Chirag Ghorpade, Nirmal Umashankar and Ameya Bafna led the qualification rounds of their respective categories in the third round of the 12th JK Tyre-FMSCI Rotax National Karting Championship here on Saturday.

While Ghorpade dominated the Micro Max event, Umashankar caught the eye in the Junior Max category while Bafna was the best performer in the Senior Max.

The first heat of the Micro Max category saw a close fight between Ghorpade of Team BPC and Shahan Ali of Team Meco Racing.

Chirag registered a time of 7:48.263 to push Shahan (7:48.328) to the second spot. Aditya Swaminathan (7:56.044) of Team Meco finished third.

Chirag won the second heat as well while Shahan and Aditya sealed the second and third place respectively.

In the Junior Max, Umashankar of Team Meco finished second in the first heat behind teammate Akash Gowda. Mohammed Nallwalla finished third.

In the second heat, Umashankar pushed Gowda to second place with Nallwalla taking the third spot.

The senior category saw Bafna (9:26.075) fend off a fierce challenge from Ricky Donison (9:26.293) in the first heat with Nayan Chatterjee (9:26.851) finishing third.

The Mumbai lad won the second heat with a time of 10:06.143. Chatterjee (10:06.362) was second while Donison (10:06.853) was third.