Gaurav Gill-Musa Sherif win Coimbatore Rally; Karna Kadur steals limelight

By David Bodapati

Coimbatore, 24 July 2011:  With only rival Arjun Rao Aroor going off the track in the very first stage today, Speed King Gaurav Gill, the Team MRF’s lead driver, for once faced the challenge of `driving slowly’ and showed enough maturity to win the event while it was the `Kadur’ brand that stole the limelight as Karna Kadur, with co-driver Somonnita Ghosh, the only lady navigator, won the 2000cc class in the third round of the Speed Indian National Rally Championship here on Sunday.

Gill, ably navigated by veteran Musa Sherif, did play to the gallery in the Super Special Stage with the display of technique and dare-devil speed to provide seat-edged excitement to the packed crowd and they responded in style with standing applause. But today, he played safe and won the rally.

Kadur and Ghosh are two famous motorsport names of yesteryears and today the next generation in Karna Kadur and co-driver Somonnita Ghosh, who were trailing behind Vikram Devadasan (co-driver Somayya AG) rallied brilliantly in the two stages to take a decisive lead. The Bangalore-Kolkata duo brought their Mitsubishi Cedia safely home to make it a back-to-back victory and took the lead in the championship. After a year’s hiatus, Karna returned to win the South India Rally in Chennai while Somonnita, took part in a one-off race with her father Arindam Ghosh as the driver. Coimbatore turned out to be their hunting ground as they made their winning debut here in 2009. Meanwhile, Overdrive editor Sirish Chandran (Nikhil Pai) who finished 2.2 seconds behind Shailendra Hegde (Prajwal Pai) was pushed up to the third place as Shailendra Hegde and Prajwal Pai logged a road penalty of 1.10 seconds for checking in early.

In the 1600 cc class, Karan AM drove to a victory as navigator Shanmuga returned after a 5-year hiatus to INRC  followed by Prakhyat Shirole (codriver Rupesh Kholay) in second and  Sidhartha Rangnekar (Nitin Jacob) in third.

In the Gypsy class, a support rally, Veteran Sanjay Agarwal (Shivprakash) notched up a facile win with Shafeeq ur Rehman (Adhiraj Bardhan) chasing a lead of over 7 minutes. John K Philip and Philip Thomas finished third.

Final results (provisional unaudited partial classification):

Overall: Gaurav Gill/Musa Sherif (Team MRF) 1 (1hr, 37 mins, 34.6 secs); Arjun Balu/ Sujith Kumar BS (MRF) 2 (1: 38: 12.7); Karna Kadur/ Somonnito Ghosh 3 (1: 44:45.7).

2000cc (Group N): Karna Kadur/ Somonnito Ghosh 1 (1: 44: 45.5); Vikram Devadasen  / Somayya AG (Pvt) 2 (1: 43: 56.4); Sirish Chandran/ Nikhil Pai (Team Overdrive) 3 (1: 44: 45.7); Shilendra Hegde/ Prajwal Pai 4(1: 43: 30,5).  

1600cc: Balram CG/ Santosh Kumar 1 (1: 55: 58.4 including 10 sec penalty); Prakhyat Shirole/ Rupesh Kholay (pvt) 1 (1: 56:38.0); Siddhartha Rangnekar / Nitin Jacob 3 (1: 57: 13.4);

1400cc (Star Cup): Karan AM / Shanmuga SN (Kari Motorsports)1 (1:52: 40:.2); Vikram Rao/ S Dinesh 2 (1:57:00.0); Vineeth Vincent Tom / Sob George 3 (1: 57: 37.1).

Gypsy – stock: Sanjay Agarwal / Shivaprakash E 1 (1:53:14.3); Shafeeq-ur-Rehman / Adhiraj Bardhan 2 (2:00:00.2); John K Philip/ Philip Thomas 3 (2:09:51.1).