Coimbatore (28 June-09): Boulders, ruts and the unusually long distance of 108 kms
of special rally stages took its toll on the cars on the first day of
the Rally of Coimbatore, the first round of Indian National Rally
Championship (INRC), on Saturday.
Of the record 61 cars that were flagged off in the morning, only 31
finished the first leg of 108 kms. Among the dropouts were leading MRF
driver Gaurav Gill and defending champion Vikram Mathias of Red Rooster.
On a dramatic day when engine problems led to a series of dropouts as
the drivers toiled on the loose soil in and around the windmill farms
of Kethannur and Palladam in Coimbatore, outsider Arjun Rao Aroor of
Team MRF took a six-second lead over Amittrajit Ghosh of Red Rooster
after the eight-stage first leg.
Team MRF’s two leading drivers Gurav Gill and Lohit Urs crashed out
in the first leg. Gill’s engine blew off in the first stage itself
while Lohit Urs got himself to lead after two rounds and then dropped
out in the third stage with an electrical problem.
Vikram Mathias was in the lead in the first stage but he had a puncture in the second losing about three minutes. Mathias came back to cut down the lead in the following stages but again suffered steering column problems in the sixth and seventh stages to fall behind.The 24-year-old Ghosh took over in the third stage and kept the lead in the next four stages. He had almost a sevenminute lead over Arjun Rao going into the last (eighth) stage of the day. Again, a puncture saw him lose three minutes and subsequently he had to follow a Baleno of Sujay Naidu which cost him further time. A road penalty of 10 seconds on Ghosh in the end made all the difference in the fight for lead after the first day.
Defending champion Mahtias, however, did not want to put the blame on the stages. “A rally is like this and you have to expect obstacles. You need to adapt well,” said Vikram and added that he would try to come back (when rally resumes on Sunday).
In the 1600cc class (Baleno), Sujay Naidu/Varun S led after the first leg. In the Rally Star Cup, Karna Kadur/Somnnita Ghosh took the first place. Surprisingly, the organisers were not able to release the official results, even provisional, after three hours of the completion of the first leg despite the fact that hi-tech machines were in place to track timings of the cars. Some work for the Federation of Motorsports Clubs of India still!
