The Indian National Rally Championship is back for its 2022 season, just a month after the delayed 2021 season wrapped up in March. This gave the South India Rally two back-to-back runs – it hosted the 2021 finale in March, and now, the 2022 season-opener in April.

Arka Motorsports’ Karna Kadur and co-driver Nikhil Pai, who won here last month as well, continued their victory streak after a titanic battle with Dean Mascarenhas (co-driver Gagan Karumbaiah).

• Mascarenhas disqualified for technical infringement
• Aditya Thakur wins in INRC-2 class

Kadur wins 2022 South India Rally

Kadur and Mascarenhas battled it out throughout the two-day rally. Kadur held the upper hand at the end of the first leg, but heading into the final stage, a slender 1.7sec margin separated the two. Kadur edged out Mascarenhas to take overall victory, as well as top honours in the INRC-1 class.

“It was a close finish and we are happy to win,” said Kadur. “We had some ongoing issues over the weekend, but we managed to nurse the car to the finish as we had no time to sort out or figure out the problems.”

Early exit for Gill

Despite promising pace, three-time Asia Pacific Rally Champion Gaurav Gill’s 2021 season was marred by mechanical woes. Unfortunately, the same issues plagued the rally-spec Mahindra XUV300 this time around as well.

Gill and co-driver Musa Sherif were forced to retire after just two stages. “The drive shaft got twisted in SS-2 (Stage 2), just a kilometre before the finish, maybe due to metal fatigue,” explained Gill. “But the car was handling good till then. We also tested a new set of tyres on all the cars and we were doing three tenths of a second faster and the performance of the JK Tyres was really good.”

Six competitors disqualified

Post-event scrutinising resulted in the stewards disqualifying six competitors whose cars did not comply with technical regulations. Mascarenhas was among those disqualified, and this promoted reigning INRC champions Aditya Thakur and co-driver Virender Kashyap to second place overall. The Chettinad Sporting duo, who competed in the INRC-3 class last season, have now made the step up to INRC-2 and took victory in that class as well.

INRC-3 and Junior INRC winner on ground, Jahaan Singh Gill, was also disqualified. This handed Kuber Sharma and co-driver Kunal Kashyap INRC-3 victory. Shivani Pruthvi and co-driver Deepti Pruthvi won in the Junior INRC class, which only saw two finishers.

The INRC-4 class ended up having just one finisher, with Rupesh Kholay and co-driver Varun Satyanarayan taking class victory by default. And finally, Himamshu Arora and co-driver Vikram Thakur won the Gypsy Cup.