Gill takes top spot in Nashik

The 2010 Speed Indian National Rally Championship season kickstarted with bang. Team MRF’s Gaurav Gill and co-driver Musa Sherif took a dominant victory driving a Mitsubishi Cedia at the first round of INRC, Nashik.

After having a comfortable lead overnight, the reigning national champion drove a brilliant rally to finish on top in the 2000cc N+ class. Meanwhile, Vikram Mathias, the winner of 2009 Nashik round, finished second for Red Rooster Racing, ahead of teammate Amittrajit Ghosh.

"It was a grand opening round for me and my team MRF. Finally, I got the monkey off my back and broke the Nashik jinx,” said an elated Gill.

Gill covered the total distance of 112.23 kms and 10 stages in 1hr 22mins 43seconds, closely followed by Mathias who overcame gear box problems to finish second. Trailing him by four seconds was team-mate Amittrajit Ghosh who in turn was ahead of fourth placed Lohith Urs of Team MRF by over a minute.

In the Spectator friendly Super Special Stage on Sunday, it was Mathias who clocked the best time of 1min 48.4sec, a clear 3.1sec ahead of Gill, but had to be content with the second place.

“We went in with a different set-up today and I was more intent on doing some drifts just to give the spectators something to cheer about. Overall, it was a good outing for us and we had no problems with the car,” Gill added.

Final Results (Provisional):

Overall and 2000cc N+:
1. Gaurav Gill/Musa Sherif (Team MRF) (1 hr 22:42.5) 
2. Vikram Mathias/PVS Murthy (Team RRR) (1hr 25:03.2)
3.Amittrajit Ghosh/Ashwin Naik (Team Red Rooster Racing) (1:26:35.7)

2000cc:
1. Girijashankar Joshy/Chandramouli M (Ovion Racing) (1:29:46.5)
2.Sujay Suresh/Varun Sathyanarayan  (Ovion Racing) (1:32:01.3) 
3. Sirish Chandran/Nikhil Pai (1hr 34:30.7)

1600 cc:
1. Rahul Kanthiraj/Vivek Bhat (1hr 36:15.4)
2. Shailender Hegde/Sheraz Ahmed (1hr 40:02.5).

1400cc: 
1.Dr Bikku Babu/George Varghese (1hr 36:24.8)
2. Byram Godrej/Anjay Kapadia (1hr 36:39.9)
3. Monish/Jeeva (1hr 45:49.1)

Gypsy:
1. Amarinder Brar/Himanshu Pareek (1hr 37:03.6)
2.Sachin Singh/Adhiraj Bhardhan (1hr 41:19.4)
3. Shakthi Bajaj/Dharmesh Sinha (Army)(1hr 43:00.7)

Rally Star Cup:
1. Phalguna V Urs/Anoop Kumar (1hr 37:26.7)
2. Venkatapathy Mettuchetty/ Santosh Kumar Selvaraj (1hr 38:57.1)
3. VS Ratan/Preetham(1hr 41:58.6).