Amittrajit Ghosh (co-driver Ashwin Naik) had a minor power glitch going into the final loop. However, the young man kept his cool to emerge the day’s leader in the Rally of Coimbatore, the third round of the FMSCI Blueband Sports Indian National Rally Championship for four wheelers, here on Saturday.
Three-time APRC champion Gaurav Gill (Aniruddha Rangnekar), set the tone at the start winning the first two stages with ease, but dropped out after two kilometres into the third stage.
Championship leader Aroor Arjun Rao (Satish Rajagopal) had a rather quiet first loop in which Karna Kadur (Nikhil Pai) finished on top. It was only a few seconds that split the top three going into the final loop. It turned out to be the most exciting stage with Ghosh coming out trumps.
“I think we all had issues with the car. It’s a hard rally and the stages were tight and demanding. Also,I had some issue with the power in the first two stages. In fact, we were slower than even the INRC2 cars and lost a lot of a time there,” said Ghosh.
However, the drivers would be wary of the Kethanur terrain on Sunday.
The results (provisional):
Overall: 1: Amittrajit Ghosh & Ashwin Naik 54:24.100; 2. Arjun Rao & Satish Rajagopal 54:43.300; 3. Philippos Matthai & P.V. Srinivas Murthy 54:51.900.
INRC2: 1. Philippos & Srinivas 54:51.900; 2. Bikku Babu & Milen George 55:34.600; 3. Fabid Ahmer & G. Sanath 55:35.000.
INRC3: 1. Jahaan Gill & Suraj Keshava 55:25.100; 2. Jason Saldanha & Thimmu Uddapanda 55:38.100; 3. Darious Shroff & Shahid Salman 56:06.600.
Gypsy class: 1. Samrat Yadav & Chandrasekar 57:22.600; 2. Darshan Nachappa & Abhinav Ganapathy 59:55.200; 3. Akarsh Sunder & Ravikumar Reddy 1:02:15.
INRC women: 1. Pragati Gowda & Trisha Alonkar 57:26.200; 2. Anushriya Gulati & Sherwin Dalmeida 57:27.600; 3. Shivani Parmar & Arjun Dheerendra 57:58.700.
