After a long postponement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the first outing of the 2021 Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) finally took place last weekend in Coimbatore. The 2021 INRC, therefore, has been shortened to just three rounds with the next two rounds scheduled to take place in Bengaluru and Chennai respectively.
The rally commenced with team JK Tyre's Gaurav Gill quickly setting the fastest lap times in the first two stages on day one. Gill had to unfortunately retire thereafter due to mechanical issues and he dropped off the rally. That put Team Arka Motorsports' driver Karna Kadur into the lead who held it till the end of the day, but after the stage he too had to retire because of mechanical difficulties to his Volkswagen Polo. Day two began with team JK Tyre's other driver Amittrajit Ghosh taking the lead, but he had to call it a day soon later due some hitches with his XUV300 Rally car.
The lead was soon taken by Chettinad Motorsports' driver Aditya Thakur who stayed there till the end and bagged his first ever overall win at the Indian National Rally Championship. Thakur also took top honours in the INRC-3 category that he was competing in. He shared the podium with Fabid Ahmer and Sahil Khanna, both of which also piloted Volkswagen Motorsport's rally-prepped VW Polos. Fabid Ahmer also took top honours in the INRC-2 class. Meanwhile the INRC-4 and Junior INRC classes saw Mujeeb Rehman and Raghuram Saminathan dominating them respectively.
Here are the complete class wise results:
Overall / INRC: 1. Aditya Thakur / Virender Kashyap (both Himachal) (02Hrs, 03mins, 29.5secs);
2. Fabid Ahmer / G Sanath (both Palakkad) (02:04:29.2);
. Sahil Khanna (Gurugram) / KN Harish (Bengaluru) (02:05:03.4).
INRC-2: 1. Fabid Ahmer / G Sanath (both Palakkad) (02:04:29.2);
2. Sahil Khanna (Gurugram) / Harish KN (Bengaluru) (02:05:03.4);
3. Aroor Vikram Rao / AG Somayya (both from Mangalore) (02:06:25.7);
INRC-3: 1. Aditya Thakur / Virender Kashyap (both Himachal) (02:03:29.5);
2. Syed Salman Ahmed (Mysuru) / Rishab BK (Mangaluru) (02:06:08.6);
3. Byram Godrej (Pune) / Varun Satyanaranaya (Bengaluru) (02:06:15.6).
INRC-4: 1. Mujeeb Rehman (Kasargod) / Ravindra Kumar (Bengaluru) (02:12:18.3);
2. Deepak Chandra / Kenith Harsha (both Bengaluru) (02:24:39.6);
3. P Ananth Kumar / GM Manjunath (both Bengaluru) (02:29:18.0).
Junior INRC (only 2 finishers): 1. Raghuram Saminathan (Coimbatore) / Bharath Sargur (Bengaluru) (02:17:16.5);
2. Shivani Pruthvi (Davangere) / Deeksha Balakrishna (Bengaluru) (02:22:45.2).
FMSCI Gypsy Challenge: 1. Rupender Sheoran (Gurugram) / Mohit Malik (Faridabad) (02:13:46.0);
2. Sanjay Agarwal / Smitha Prasad (both Bengaluru) (02:15:17.7);
3. Mettuchetty Venkatapathy / S Santosh Kumar (both Coimbatore) (02:17:15.4).
The next two rounds of the Indian National Rally Championship will be the Karnataka 1000 Rally that will take place in Bengaluru between March 11-13 and the South India Rally scheduled between March 25-27 in Chennai.