Karna Kadur dominates day one of INRC

Bengaluru’s Karna Kadur (co-driver Nikhil Pai) overcame some set-up issues at the start to take the overall lead in the Rally of Coimbatore, a round of the FMSCI Indian National Rally Championship (INRC), here on Saturday.

“We are happy with how the stages have gone thus far. It has deteriorated over the four runs and, from here, it’s about bringing the car home,” said Kadur, who had arrived here with limited seat time.

“If we had had more (seat time), we could have been a bit more competitive. Also, we had not tested on a surface like this and, that’s why we were caught off-guard at the start,” he said.

Gill loses the plot

Of course, he knew it was going to be tough matching up with seven-time National champion Gaurav Gill, who lost the plot a bit towards the end of the second stage due to electrical issues.

After making close to 50s in the first two stages over Kadur, Gill felt things were going wrong with the car. “So, I backed off and started driving conservative. I think the ECU was dying. It was not responsive and, I tried my best to get the car going but nothing worked,” said a disappointed Gill.

He prefers not to give up. “We are still in the fight. I can go out there tomorrow and win the stages and get maximum points. It’s not over until the fat lady sings,” he quipped.

The results (provisional, after Leg 1): Overall/INRC: 1. Karna Kadur & Nikhil Pai (Bengaluru) 01:00:06.2s; 2. Aditya Thakur & Virender Kashyap (HP); 3. Dean Mascarenhas & Gagan Karumbaiah.

INRC-2: 1. Mascarenhas & Karumbaiah 01:02:03.3; 2. Sahil Khanna & K.N. Harish 01:02:16.0& 3. Aroor Vikram Rao & A.G. Somayya (Mangaluru).

INRC-3: 1. Thakur & Kashyap 01:01:42.2; 2. Maninder Singh Prince & Vinay Padmashali 01:02:18.0; 3. Byram Godrej & Varun 01:02.58.1.

INRC-4: 1. Vaibhav Marathe & S. Dinesh 01:07:22.7; 2. Mujeeb Rehman & Ravindra Kumar; 3. Shivani Parmar & Dr. Vani Parmar (Mumbai) 01:08:35.4.

FMSCI Gypsy Challenge: 1. Rupender Sheoran & Mohit Malik 01:05:12.8; 2. Sanjay Agarwal & Smitha Prasad (Bengaluru); 3. Mettuchetty Venkatapathy & S. Santosh Kumar (Coimbatore).