Gaurav Gill-Musa Sherif win Speed Rally de Kolkata

By David Bodapati

Kolkata, 20 Sept 2009: Speed demon Gaurav Gill and co-driver Musa Sherif of Team MRF displayed controlled aggression but still clocked the best time in the Spectator Special Stage which attracted a sizeable crowd to win the Speed Rally de Kolkata, the third round of the Speed-Indian National Rally Championship at Jadhavpur Stadium here on Sunday.

Driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia, Gill was quicker than his arch-rival Amittrajit Ghosh (co-driver Ashwin Naik) by four seconds over two laps of the 1.2-km long circuit to take the Overall honours and also the 2000cc N+ category.

The 28-year old Gill was the quickest on all the three days to pick up 16 points to mark his presence in the National Championship stakes after two non-finishes in the previous two rounds at Coimbatore and Bangalore. Unless the pending protests change the points positions, Amittrajit Ghosh will trail Gill by a norrow margin in the INRC with three rounds to go.

“It certainly feels great to finally win a rally after such a long time. At one point, I wasn’t sure how long my bad luck would continue, but now that I have finally a victory under my belt, you can say, I have turned the corner,” said a noticeably relieved Gill.

In the other classes, the overnight positions remained much the same except in the Gypsy Cup where Anil Wadia (co-driver Prajwal Pai) of Team Thunderbolt moved up to second place from third, displacing Bobby Jose (co-driver Bobby Varghese) of Team DDL Sports.

Patiala’s Khushwant Singh Radhawa (co-driver Vinay Sekhar) came up with a fine drive in the Super Special Stage today to confirm their victory in the Gypsy Cup after finishing second to Sandeep Sharma in the previous two rounds.

Sujay S (co-driver Varun S) easily held on to their top position in the 1600cc class as did Francis K Jose (co-driver Manoj Mohan) of Team DDL Sports in the 1400cc category and Karna Kadur (co-driver Somonita Ghosh) in the Rally Star Cup.

The results (provisional and unaudited):

Overall: 1. Gaurav Gill/Musa Sherif (Team MRF, Cedia N+) (53mins, 26secs); 2. Amittrajit Ghosh/Ashwin Naik (Red Rooster Racing, Cedia N+) (54:45); 3. Sujay Suresh/Varun Satyanarayana (Maruti Baleno, 57:18).

1600cc (Maruti Baleno): 1. Sujay/Varun; 2. Rahul Kanthraj/Vivek Bhatt (1:00:25); 3. Ranjith Gopinath/Dilieep Ramanujam (1:04:43).

1400cc (MPFI Esteem): 1. Francis K Jose/Manoj Mohan (DDL Sports) (1:02:14) 2. Saurabh Choudhury/Shivaprakash E (1:03:01); 3. Asgar Ali SK/Debashish Ghosh (1:08:03).

Rally Star Cup (Carbureted Esteem): 1. Karna Kadur/Somonnita Ghosh (1:00:37); 2. Phalguna Urs/Anoop Kumar (1:01:07); 3. Venkatapathy MR/Santosh K Selvaraj 3 (1:02:36).

Gypsy Cup: 1. Khushwant Randhawa/Vinay Sekhar (1:03:51); 2. Anil Wadia/Prajwal Pai (Team Thunderbolt) (1:05:27); 3. Bobby Jose/Bobby Varghese (DDL Sports) (1:07:01).