Overnight leader Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) of Delhi signed off on a merry note, winning the Rally of Coimbatore, the second round of the Indian Rally Championship, on Sunday.
Starting the day with a sizeable lead, the Asia Pacific Rally champion did not do anything silly. He played it safe right through to win by over two minutes over his nearest rival Arjun Rao (co-driver Satish Rajagopal) from Karnataka.
“The stages were rutted and broken. It was rough as well. Obviously, I had to be smart. Also, it was very important to have a good rhythm. We drove slow and cut down about a second for a kilometre. So, we lost about 26 seconds on the LMW stage. But I am happy that we were still the fastest on both the stages,” he said.
Gill’s Mahindra Adventure teammate Sunny Sidhu (P.V. Srinivas Murthy) finished third. The third round of the FMSCI Indian Rally Championship will be the AVT Premium South India Rally in Chennai from July 25 to 27.
The results (Unofficial final classification):
Indian Rally Championship (IRC): 1. Gaurav Gill/Musa Sherif (Mahindra Adventure) 1:39.53.2; 2. Arjun Rao/Satish Rajagopal 1:41.56.9; 3. Sunny Sidhu/P.V. Srinivas Murthy (Mahindra Adventure) 1:42.45.8.
IRC 2000cc: 1. Rahul Kantharaj/Vivek Bhatt (Team Yokohama) 1:44.21.6; 2. Byram Godrej/A.G. Somayya 1:44.36.0; 3. Prithivi Dominic/M.S. Ravindra 1:45.57.7.
IRC 1600cc: 1. Arjun Rao/Satish Rajagopal 1:41.56.9; 2. Vikram Devadasen/Shrikanth (Team Yokohama) 1:44.05.4; 3. Phalguna Urs/Anoop Kumar 1:44.33.7.
FMSCI 1600cc Cup: 1. B. Raghu Nandan/K. Suraj 1:46.31.3; 2. K.C. Adith/K.N. Harish 1:48.27.1; 3. Aniruddha Rangnekar/Nitin Jacob 1:52.24.7.
