Gaurav Gill turned in a stellar performance to clinch the Rally of Coimbatore, Round 3 of FMSCI Indian National Rally Championship 2020 held over the weekend. Further, the win not only saw the JK Tyre driver and his trusted co-driver Musa Sherif complete a hat-trick of wins in this year's championship, but also brings him closer to his seventh national title, a record currently held by the legendary V R Naren Kumar.
The third outing of the 2020 INRC turned out to be a grand success with a record 63 (including nine women) participants lining up for glory, a first in the history of INRC.
Gaurav Gill entered the final day in the lead, and faced a late but spirited onslaught from MRF Tyres’ Dr Bikku Babu. However, Gill held onto his momentum, and despite facing issues with his car, managed to win both the special stages of the day to end with a total time of 01:27:56.700 hours to secure yet another victory.
"It was a very special win for us. We started the day with some electrical problems with our car and I knew I had to avoid committing anything silly," he said, adding "I made sure to drive safe and do just enough to protect the lead that I had," he further added.
Bikku Babu (with Bonnie Thomas) came into the last day trailing by over a minute and launched a tough fight back but eventually had to settle for the second spot with a total time of 01:29:21.100 hours. He however took the top honours in his INRC 2 category.
JK Tyre’s Fabid Ahmer (with co-driver Eldo Chacko) impressed everyone with their performance, winning the overall third podium and pocketing the first place in the INRC 3 category with a total time of 01:29:57.200 hours.
Defending champ Chetan Shivram (Yokohama Tyres) along with co-driver Shahid Salman posted a total time of 01:31:05.800 hours to finish second in the INRC 2 classification followed by Ritesh Guttedar (with Lokaranjan H J) who took a total of 01:31:43.600 hours to complete the six special stages.
Team Nutulapati's Aditya Thakur (with Virender Kashyap) put in a time of 01:31:36.700 hours to finish behind Fabid in the INRC 3 category, while Maninder Singh Prince (with Vinay Padmashali) finished third with a total time of 01:32:57.400 hours.
Yokohama Tyres' Vaibhav Marathe (with Suhan M Kabeer) won the INRC 4 category with a time of 01:36:51.700 hours. And while Sanjay Razdan (with Karan Aukta) won the FMSCI Gypsy Challenge, Kerala’s Athira Murali (with George Varghese) won the ladies class, closely followed by Delhi’s Amandeep Kaur.
The class-wise provisional results are as follows: