Thaindian News

Kolkata, Sep 20 (IANS) Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) of Team MRF signed off in style by clocking the fastest in the Spectator Special Stage as the curtain came down on a rather contentious Rally de Kolkata, the third round of the Speed-Indian National Rally Championship, here Sunday.
Gill was quicker than his arch-rival Amittrajit Ghosh (co-driver Ashwin Naik) by a good four seconds over the 1.2 km circuit at the Jadhavpur Stadium here to top the Overall and also the 2000cc (N+) classes and notch his first success in 13 months.

The 28-year old Gill was the quickest on all the three days to pick up 16 points and mark his presence in the championship stakes after two non-finishes in the previous two rounds at Coimbatore and Bangalore.

“It certainly feels great to finally win a rally after such a long time. At one point, I wasn’t sure how long my bad luck would continue, but now that I have finally a victory under my belt, you can say, I have turned the corner,” said a noticeably relieved Gill.

In other classes, the overnight positions remained much the same except in the Gypsy Cup where Anil Wadia (co-driver Prajwal Pai) of Team Thunderbolt moved up to second place from third, displacing Bobby Jose (co-driver Bobby Varghese) of Team DDL Sports.

Patiala’s Khushwant Singh Randhawa (co-driver Vinay Sekhar) came up with a fine drive in the Triple-S Sunday to confirm their victory in the Gypsy Cup after finishing second to Sandeep Sharma in the previous two rounds.

Sujay Suresh (co-driver Varun Satyanarayana) easily held on to their top position in the 1600cc class as did Francis K Jose (co-driver Manoj Mohan) of Team DDL Sports in the 1400cc category and Karna Kadur (co-driver Somonita Ghosh) in the Rally Star Cup.

The Triple-S was delayed by nearly two hours while many competitors, who had driven to Kolkata from Durgapur, where the Special Stages were run on Friday and Saturday, complained of inadequate lodging arrangements in the metro on arrival Saturday night. Most of the competitors had to make do with soiled clothes as their luggage arrived in Kolkata only after the end of the event.

Meanwhile, the Red Rooster Racing team, whose lead driver Vikram Mathias had slammed into the stationary Team MRF car of Arjun Balu Friday, have written a strong letter to the Stewards voicing their displeasure over the failure to remove Balu’s car after it had gone off the road on the first Special Stage.

The results (provisional and unaudited):

Overall: Gaurav Gill/Musa Sherif (Team MRF, Cedia N+) 1 (53mins, 26secs); Amittrajit Ghosh/Ashwin Naik (Red Rooster Racing, Cedia N+) 2 (54:45); Sujay Suresh/Varun Satyanarayana 3 (Maruti Baleno, 57:18).

1600cc (Maruti Baleno): Sujay/Varun 1; Rahul Kanthraj/Vivek Bhatt 2 (1:00:25); Ranjith Gopinath/Dilieep Ramanujam 3 (1:04:43).

1400cc (MPFI Esteem): Francis K Jose/Manoj Mohan (DDL Sports) 1 (1:02:14) Saurabh Choudhury/Shivaprakash E 2 (1:03:01); Asgar Ali SK/Debashish Ghosh 3 (1:08:03).

Rally Star Cup (Carburetted Esteem): Karna Kadur/Somonita Ghosh 1 (1:00:37); Phalguna Urs/Anoop Kumar 2 (1:01:07); Venkatapathy MR/Santosh K Selvaraj 3 (1:02:36).

Gypsy Cup: Khushwant Randhawa/Vinay Sekhar 1 (1:03:51); Anil Wadia/Prajwal Pai (Team Thunderbolt) 2 (1:05:27); Bobby Jose/Bobby Varghese (DDL Sports) 3 (1:07:01).