Southern Safari, National TSD Championship finals flagged off
Bengaluru, 24 Feb 2023: Southern Safari, the grand finals of the 2022 fmsci Indian National TSD Rally Championship (INTSDRC) is flagged off at ‘The Club’ on Mysore Road and is set to provide a fitting finale with a long run of over 600Km for the two days. The final will run to Shivamogga on Leg 1 on Saturday and returns to conclude here on Sunday. The Prize Distribution will also be at The Club on Sunday evening.
Promoted by Pro Sports and organized by Karnataka Motor Sports Club (KMSC), the final of the National Championship offers National titles in the following four categories for both drivers and navigators (co-drivers): INTSDRC, INTSDRC2, INTSDRC – Women and INTSDRC – Novice.
Experienced drivers Sk Asgar Ali and Md Mustafa who topped the East Zone qualies will start as favourites along another former champions Ganesh Moorthy and T Nagarajan from South, but the latter duo trailed Maheshwaran N and P Muthuswamy in the points table in the Qualifiers. Other pairs to watch out for are INRC regulars Aeman Ahmed and Sagar M, and Kolkata pair of Subir Roy and Nirav Mehta. However, it is a winner-take all finale and each pair will be gunning for glory as the National titles are at stake.
Instagram Photo @Autotrack.ind.in
The INTSDRC2 class has seen Deep Dutta and Chandan Sen from Kolkata top the East Zone qualifying round while Rohit Kashyap and Sailendra Singh led from the West Zone event and Harish VS and M Chandrasekhar did well in the South Zone followed by Anil Abbas and Amal Abbas from Kerala while the Bengaluru ladies Aparna and Lalitha qualified third in INRC2 class and will fight in the ladies class too.
Aritra Chakraborty and Sanjit Chaudhuri in the Novice class from East and Nizar and Vinoth Kumar topped the South qualies. Two other teams also made it to the final in the Novice class.
SK Olivia and SK Prasad in the Ladies class have also qualified from the East Zone. Lt Col. Reena Jha and Kasish Malhotra Mehta, and Geetika Pant and Meena Jain are the other Ladies team who qualified from West Zone.
Well-know techie pair of Aparna Pathak and Lalitha Gowda, who qualified from South along with Sheena Sabrewal and Trupti Gupta, Jasmeet Kaur and Jyothi Iyengar will make up the other ladies finalists.
“The response was good for the regional rounds and the drivers dished out excellent performances that saw keen competition. All safety measures are in place and we did the final route inspection yesterday. Now all set for crowning new champions for 2022,” said Sujith Kumar BS, the man behind Prosports, the promoters of TSD Nationals. He is also the Vice-President of the FIM ASIA.
