Gaurav Gill avenges last year’s defeat

Gaurav Gill and navigator Musa Sherif of Team MRF stamped their authority on the first leg of the Speed Indian National Rally Championship at the Dadasaheb Phalke Smarak here on Sunday.

“This Nashik tarmac surface really tests drivers. But we were lucky,” an elated Gill said. The victory on Sunday must have tasted sweeter given what Gill went through last year. His Cedia broke down within 100 metres of the start of the spectator special stage. “It’s over,” was Gill’s quick reply when reminded of the 2009 episode. “Don’t even remind me of last year. All has been good this year so let us not get back to what happened last year.”

Meanwhile, Mathias, who won here last year, had to be content with the second place in his Mitsubishi Cedia with co-driver PVS Murthy. Kolkata’s Amittrajit Ghosh and Ashwin Naik, also of Team Red Rooster Racing, finished third.

RESULTS
Overall & 2000cc N+: 1 G Gill/M Sherif (Team MRF) 1hr 22:42.5; 2 V Mathias/PVS Murthy (Team RRR) 1hr 25:03.2; 3 A Ghosh/A Naik (Team RRR) 1:26:35.7; 2000cc: 1 G Joshy/ Chandramouli M (Ovion Racing) 1:29:46.5; 2 S Suresh/ V Sathyanarayan (Ovion Racing) 1:32:01.3; 3 S Chandran/N Pai 1hr 34:30.7; 1600cc: 1 R Kanthiraj/V Bhat 1hr 36:15.4; 2 S Hegde/S Ahmed 1hr 40:02.5; 1400cc: B Babu/G Varghese 1hr 36:24.8; 2 B Godrej/
A Kapadia 1hr 36:39.9; 3 Monish/Jeeva 1hr 45:49.1; Gypsy: 1 A Brar/H Pareek 1hr 37:03.6; 2 S Singh/A Bhardhan 1hr 41:19.4; 3 S Bajaj/
D Sinha (Army) 1hr 43:00.7; Rally Star Cup:
1 Phalguna V/A Kumar 1hr 37:26.7;
2. V Mettuchetty/S Selvaraj 1hr 38:57.1;
3 VS Ratan/Preetham 1hr 41:58.6.