Gurmeet Virdi (co-driver Kirpal Singh Tung) of Gerrari Offroaders Chandigarh successfully defended his title at the Force Gurkha RFC India 2017 as he emerged the overall champion with a total score of 2019 points out of 2600.
Gurmeet is the only Indian driver till date to have won the country’s toughest off-road motorsport competition since its launch in 2014. The overall second position was held by Jagat Nanjappa (co-driver Chetan Changappa) of Team V5 Offroaders from Coorg with 1906 points.
In an interesting turn of events, Gerrari Offroaders’ Sanbir Singh Dhaliwal (co-driver Gurpartap Singh) overtook Siddartha Santosh in the final moments to clinch third spot on the podium with 1685 points.
Gurmeet was elated on winning the country’s most coveted offroad motorsport trophy for the second time in a row. He said, “I am overjoyed that we’ve successfully managed to defend our title. It was a pretty tough competition, the positions kept on jumbling throughout, but we are happy that we came out victorious. There was no pressure throughout the event but the last stage of the competition gave me some serious chills as the competition was really close.
“It’s the first time that our club Gerrari Offroaders has clinched two positions on the podium in RFC India. Overall, I couldn’t have been happier.”
As the top Indian driver of the competition, Gurmeet will get monetary benefits of up to $8000.
This includes the automatic fully paid-for entry in the RFC 2017 Grand Final in Malaysia that is worth $3900 and the travel expenses amounting to around $1100.
(The writer is in Goa at the invitation of Cougar Motorsport Pvt. Ltd.)
