Sanjay Agarwal-Shivu Shivappa win Scissors Rally

By George Francis

Coimbatore, 3 June 1996: A fairytale came alive for private entrants at the 14th Scissors Action Rally here on Sunday. Sanjay Agarwal and Shivu Shivappa picked up the overall winner’s trophy for cars, while bike tuner Krishnamoorthy could not hide his excitment as Krishna Naveen and Sujith Kumar lifted the overall winners trophy for two-wheelers.

This turn of events came as a surprise to many as a few days before the rally, tyre giants MRF and JK, decided to pull out. Objections to certain rules and regulations brought up by the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India (FMSCI) resulted in this walk-out and even as the rally was being run on June 2, representatives from both teams were sitting with FMSCI council members in Delhi to arrive at a solution.

Perfection in organisation saw the Coimbatore Auto Sports Club (CASC) getting 71 two-wheeler entrants and ten four-wheelers, despite the fact that MRF and JK were absent.

The Special Stage Rally, run to the rules of the Federation Internationiale de l’Automobile (FIA), the world body governing motorsport and the FMSCI, was a rallyist’s delight. The 550-km really spelled out the meaning of rough and tough.

Major names among the middle-order in Indian rallying led the field of entrants, 55 Group D Unmodified bikes and 17 Group A Modified bikes tuned for the start while a long Group A Modified car and nine Group N Unmodified cars were all set to run.

Faourites in the four-wheeler category were Sanjay Agarwal and Shivu Shivappa. KE Kumar and Jaidas Menon, Prakash B Narayan and Preetinder S Tiwana, Sam N Katgara and Neville C Poonawalla.

Among the two-wheelers, there were the invariable Shoguns. Hot favourites were local rider T Ravichandran and his Madras-based navigator S Bhuvaneswari. Paritosh Kohok, the champion Group D navigator of last year, was riding a Group D bike himself, after his good performance astride a Shogun in Nashik earlier this year. Suresh Kumar was his navigator. Zubin Patel and Praful M Sancheti, who had placed third in Group D in the first lef of the 1996 rallying championship at Nashik in January, were rallying in South India for the first time and miracles were expected of them.

Of the 72 starters in two-wheelers, 52 finished, the majority of dropouts being due to mechanical problems. Out of ten cars, nine finished.

(Editor’s Note: This article is manually migrated in July 2020 to support: INRC Winners: Hall of Fame)

(This article is a press release by George Francis and was also published in Auto India magazine)