Source: Timesofindia.com

Durgapur (18-Sep 2009): Much to the relief of everyone, the sun shone brightly on the first day of the third leg of the Speed Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) here on Friday. That provided the drivers with quite a friendly track, but could not, however, prevent an incident-free day.

About 600m before the finish of the first special stage (SS), Arjun Balu of Team MRF skidded off the track. Vikram Mathias of Red Rooster, who was coming behind him, rammed into his rear. Balu could not recover from the damage and had to withdraw.

Red Rooster team management was not at all amused about the incident, as they felt that the stewards had not informed their driver about the accident. However, Mathias also could not last long and he too skidded off in the third SS. With Mathias out, the onus was on Amittrajit Ghosh to carry on the fight for Red Rooster. The former national racing and rally champion, who started off very cautiously in the initial SS, did push hard in the latter stages and as per the provisional results, he is in the second position, behind day’s leader Gaurav Gill of Team MRF.
   

Ghosh gained ground in the sixth and last SS of the day, where he gained a 10-second lead over Gill. At the end of the first day, Ghosh recorded a time of 00:24:24sec, just 28 seconds behind Gill, who had a timing of 00:23:56. Gill’s teammate Lohith V Urs was plaed third with 00:24:51. Six more stages will be run on Saturday.

A tired but relieved Ghosh latter said that he was happy with his show. “Some technical changes in the car along with use of new tyres went off well for us,” he said. The Kolkata lad sounded confident of earning a podium finish in his home rally, which concludes on Sunday.

PROVISIONAL RESULTS AFTER DAY - 1