Sri Lanka honoursits motor racing champs at CEAT SLADA Awards
The CEAT Racing Team won the Team Championship for Cars for a second successive year and Ashan Silva was declared Best Driver, accounting for the top laurels at the 2015 CEAT SLADA Championship awards, the grand culmination of another closely-contested motor racing season.
Shehan Adikari was adjudged the Best Rider of 2015 repeating his feat of last year, while the Team Championship for Motorbikes went to Honda Racing at this event, at which awards were also presented to nine individual supporting champions and to the four best drivers and riders at team events.
The CEAT SLADA Championship awards, so named in acknowledgement of the title sponsorship provided to this event by Sri Lanka’s leading tyre brand CEAT for the past six years, was attended by the cream of Sri Lanka’s motor racing fraternity, officials, senior ranks of the armed forces and eminent invitees.
Performances at the five major race meets of 2015, the Fox Hill Super Cross, Sigiriya Rally Cross, Gunners Super Cross, Gajaba Super Cross and Rotherham Katukurunda Circuit Meet were considered for this year’s CEAT SLADA Championship Awards.
Of the nine awards presented to individual champions the supporting car events, Kushan Peiris and Sajaad Zuhair won two awards apiece, while the five awards in the Motorbike category went to Imal Manchanayaka, Mithuna C. Sigera, Rugvid Babujee, Ishan Dasanayaka and Evon B. Gurusinghe.
Hansika Abeysinghe, the 13 year old girl who won the 160cc fourstroke event at the Katukurunda Circuit Meet was recognised as the ‘Up and Coming Rider’ of 2015.
The CEAT Racing Team which took the Car Team Championship achieved a total of 61 podium finishes at the five race meets of 2015, consolidating its position as a force to be reckoned with on Sri Lanka’s racing tracks.
The meet schedule for the 2016 CEAT SLADA Championship comprises of the Sigiriya Rally Cross (19th& 20th March 2016) Fox Hill Super Cross (23rd&24th April 2016), Rotherham Katukurunda Circuit Meet 1 (27th& 28th May 2016), Gunners Super Cross (9th& 10th July 2016), and Rotherham Katukurunda Circuit Meet 2 (15th& 16th October 2016).
Besides its sponsorship of the CEAT SLADA Championship CEAT supports the race meets conducted by the Sri Lanka Army and the Sri Lanka Air Force, as well as the sport’s governing body Sri Lanka Automobile Sports (SLAS). As part of its partnership with SLAS, CEAT Kelani Holdings is the principal sponsor of all Ford Laser/Mazda 1300cc and 1500cc ‘One Make’ racing events conducted during the year, at which all competing drivers race on CEAT radial tyres.
A global tyre brand present in 110 countries and now headquartered in India, CEAT is an acronym that stands for Cavi Electrici Affini Torino, or Electrical Cables & Allied Products of Turin, with origins that date back to 1924 in Italy. CEAT Kelani Holdings manufactures half of Sri Lanka’s pneumatic tyre requirements, and CEAT is the highest selling radial tyre brand in the country.
