High on his maiden top-10 finish in round 2 in Australia and an impressive lap time of 1:55.146 in practice 3 on Friday, 21-year old Rajiv could not have asked for a better start when he set a lap time of 1:53.573, finishing seventh.
Despite getting the advantage of starting third on the grid, Rajiv dropped to tenth by the start of the 10th lap. A crash in the final lap further dented his hopes and the Chennai lad could eventually manage only a lowly 22nd finish.
Meanwhile, Senthil gained two places from his poor qualifying spot of 20th to finish 18th.
"After my best ever qualifier finish, I was charged up for Race 1. But I missed a good start and got held back in the chasing bunch. However, I made a steady recovery and by the last lap returned to Top 10. I pushed harder but crashed. My aim then was to just finish the race. I'm sad not to meet my target but I learnt a lot," Rajiv said.
Meanwhile, Honda's Indian teen rider duo of Kritik Habib finished a best-ever ninth in Race 1 of the Honda Thailand Talent Cup (Honda's development programme for Asian riders run on NSF250R) while Mohammad Mikail had a crash while avoiding an impact with the rider before him.
(Debayan Mukherjee can be contacted at debayan.m@.in)
( With inputs from IANS )