The duo of Gaurav Gill and Musa Sherif has been instrumental in showing everyone who’s the boss with an overall result that is head and shoulders above the competition at the end of day one at the Rally of Arunachal. For perspective, Gaurav’s expert piloting of his XUV300 has helped him make up 30-second increments per stage over the span of day 1. Thus, at the end of the proceedings, his overall timing of 35:38.600 minutes was a whopping four minutes over the Polo R2 of the second-placed duo of Karna Kadur and Nikhil Pai (Team MRF tyres). A further testament to Gill’s expertise is the fact that the time difference between the second and third placed competitor (Dean Mascarenhas/Shrupta padival, Team Yokohama tyres) was a scant 39 seconds.
Recounting the day’s experiences, Gill said, “It’s been a great run so far. We have a really good setup in the car, with the new R2-spec engine from Mahindra with a six-speed sequential setup. Right now I’m hoping we can put everything together, and return to the top spot of the podium.”
The top ten results for day one are as follows:
However, the first day of the Rally of Arunachal hasn’t been without incident. News first came in of the Yokohama Tyres duo of Chetan Shivram (with co-driver Rupesh Kholay) suffering ECU issues, leading to last year’s INRC champ suffering a DNF. This wasn’t the end for Team Yokohama’s troubles, though, with car number 24 (Lokesh Gowda/Sudhindra B G) going off the path, with another DNF. Lastly, JK Tyre’s Amittrajit Ghosh (with co-driver Ashwin Naik) clipped his front left wheel during a stage, leading to a loss of time. Hence, he shall be restarting under the Super Rally Format.