The 5th round of the National championship which is also the second round of the Vento Cup was held at the MMSC race track in Chennai.
A resurfaced track made for very tricky conditions as grip levels were very low. There were also two international guest drivers from China. Keith dominated the Vento Cup right from the practice sessions proving his skill even among International Competition.
De Souza only managed to qualify in 2nd behind Niranjan Todkarni as he had to back off because of slower cars getting in the way. Keith and Niranjan both got a good start in Race 1 but Keith put pressure on Niranjan and took the lead on the first lap itself.
From then there was no looking back as he drove a flawless race going on to set the fastest lap of the race and win by massive margin of 5 seconds with championship leader Karminder Singh in 3rd.
Race 2 was a reverse grid which meant Keith had to start back in 8th place. He made his way up into 4th place but was then pushed off-track and fell back down to 7th place with damage to his steering.
He still fought back with a damaged car to bring in a 5th place finish. In race three Keith started in 2nd with Niranjan in Pole position.
Keith kept mounting the pressure on Niranjan but the extremely slippery surface meant that he could not find a way past finishing just 0.8 sec behind the leader.
In the IJTC championship it was a two way fight between Keith and Ananth Pithawalla from Mumbai. The two drivers have been dominating the championship and were only separated by 0.008 seconds in qualifying with Ananth in first and Keith in 2nd.
In race 1 Ananth had a false start which meant Keith took the race win. The reverse grid 2nd race saw Keith start in 4th position with Anant in 3rd.
The two fought their way past front two on lap 1 itself and from then on it was a fierce two-way fight between the two. Anant kept his cool to defend Keith as they crossed the finish line with less than a second separating the two.
The duo was so fast on the slippery track surface that they pulled out a whopping 49 second lead to the third place finisher.
Keith is still leading the IJTC championship by 4 points with one last round to go and has now moved up to 2nd in the Vento Cup Championship with two more rounds to go.
Keith also took the prize for being the fastest driver on the weekend in the Vento cup.
The next round of the championship will again be held in Chennai and his aim is to win both the Championships. Keith is also working hard on his future plans of moving to europe to compete in the Audi TT Cup Germany.
