The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : Gaurav Gill corners glory

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 07, 2007
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Sport - Racing : Motor

Gaurav Gill corners glory

Special Correspondent

CHAMPIONS: Gaurav Singh Gill and Moosa Sherif of Team MRF, who won the overall title in the Coffee Day Rally championship in Chikmagalur on Sunday.

Chikmagalur: Gaurav Singh Gill completed the kill in the Coffee Day Rally Championship, which ended here on Sunday afternoon.

Starting the day with an unassailable lead over Lohit Urs, the Chandigarh based driver cruised to a comfortable victory over Arjun Balu, also from Team MRF. The winning lead was 1 minute and 51 seconds.

This is Gaurav's second straight win in the INRC Championship this season. Gaurav had also won the first round held at Kochi.

Overnight second-placed Lohit Urs was plagued by bad luck on the final day of the rally. On the very first stage on Sunday, Lohit Urs' Ford Fiesta had a brake failure. While negotiating a U-turn his car gently flipped over and, though he and his co-driver were able to get the car on all four wheels again, they lost a lot of valuable time.

Driving with only the hand brake Lohit managed to keep on course for a decent finish but on the repeat of the farm stage, his car had a flat tyre that took time to change. The car did finish the rally but he and his co-driver were way down in the placings.

The Rally Star Cup section produced a thrilling finish.

Overnight leader Mazdayar K. Vatcha had a fifty second lead over third placed J. Aravind, but the latter kept cutting into the difference till he finally eclipsed Mazdayar Vatcha to take the title at the finish.

Maiden title

Aravind and co-driver S.M. Bharath were delighted to notch up their maiden title in the INRC. The Bangalore-based brothers nosed ahead of Mazdayar Vatcha to win by four seconds.

Amritraj Ghosh and Sourabh Choudary came up with a fine performance to annex the 1400 cc section. The duo also placed a creditable sixth in the overall category.

Sunday's start list had 31 cars of which only 26 finished.

The provisional results: Overall section: Gaurav Singh Gill/ Moosa Sherif (Team MRF) 1.41:02 Cedia 2000; 2. Arjun Balu/ Kumar Ramaswamy (Team MRF) Cedia 2000 1.42:53; 3. Arjun Rao Aroor/ S.K. Rajagopal (Team MRF) 1600 Baleno 1.46.33; 4. Philipos Mathai/ Ashwin Naik 1600 cc Baleno 1.49.01; 5. B.S. Pruthvi/ Sunil Shetty 1600 cc Baleno 1.50.33; 6. Amritraj Ghosh/ Sourabh Choudary 1400cc Esteem 1.53:44.

Rally Star Cup: 1. Aravind J/ S.M. Bharath 1400 cc Esteem 1.54.23; 2. Mazadyar K. Vatcha/ Kaushik Shinde 1400 cc Esteem 1.54.27; 1400 cc: 1. Amritraj Ghosh/ Sourabh Choudary 1.53:44; 2. Sujay/ M. Chandrashekar 2.01: 07; 3. G. Raju Prashanth/ Samuel Sangeeth 2.10:11.

Gypsy Class: Suresh Rana/ Harpreet Bava 1.57:33; 2. Kamaljit Virdi/ Manoj Kumar 2.17:05.

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