Asserting his dominance, two-time APRC champion Gaurav Gill won Round 3 of the 2017 MRF FMSCI Indian National Rally championship, leading four out of the six special stages in Jaipur. Gill and his partner Musa Shariff were driving for Team Mahindra Adventure and conquered through the challenging terrain in their rally prepped Mahindra XUV500. The team took 13.21.1 minutes to complete the 13.9 km Night Hawk stage, passing through curves in the dark with ease.
While the first Special Stage (SS) was cleared by Gill comfortably, the Shiv Shakti 1 SS 2 saw the driver take 6.49.1 minutes to finish fifth, behind defending champion Karna Kadur of Arka Motorsports (6.01.5m) and teammate Amittrajit Ghosh (6.12.1m).
"I suffered in the second stage as I couldn't avoid a rock and picked up a puncture," Gill said. Adding further, he said, "But I am glad I came through. This is one of the toughest rallies and the night stage has really got us all excited."
(Team Mahindra Adventure's Gaurav Gill and Musa Shariff lead the INRC 2017 championship)
By SS 3, Gill was back on top of the leaderboard and managed to finish the 13.8 km leg in 12.09.5 minutes. The same aggressive pace continued in SS 4 as well as well as in special stage 5. However, by then Karna and Amittrajit both faced breakdowns with their respective cars. While Karna was out of contention by SS 5, Amittrajit managed to complete the leg in 18.16.9 minutes, catching up to Gill by a good margin. However, the effort could not yield a podium finish for the rally driver.
That said, Dean Mascarenhas' INRC 3 team in the Volkswagen Polo and Rahul Kanthraj's INRC 2 outfit inherited the second and third positions. Kanthraj and navigator Vivek Bhatt took an impressive win in the final special stage 7, while Gill comfortably finished third, having won the entire round. SS 6 had to be cancelled after a medical emergency in the village that needed the rally to be stopped. A woman in labour had to be taken to the hospital.
RESULTS
INRC:
1. Gaurav Gill & Musa Sharif
2. Dean Mascarenhas & Shruptha Padival
3. Rahul Kanthraj & Vivek Y Bhatt
INRC 2:
1. Rahul Kanthraj & Vivek Y Bhatt
2. Younus Ilyas & Harish Kumar
3. Jacob KJ & Manoj Mohanan
INRC 3:
1. Dean Mascarenhas & Shruptha Padival
2. Saddam Ali Saikh & Abhijeet Singh
3. Daraius Shroff & Nitin Jacob
FMSCI 2WD Cup:
1. Chetan Shivram & Rupesh Koley
2. Suraj Thomas & Thomas Paul
3. Sachin Sharma & Sagar Malappa
4WD Open:
1. S. Yadav & V. Kashyap
2. Himangshu Arora & Kunal Kashyap
3. Sanjay Razdan & Karan Aukta
2WD Open:
Lakshya Veer Dabbas & Aakshay Suhhag
