Samir enjoys healthy lead over Gaurav Gill
Samir Thapar, who leads the South India Rally, in action during day one on Saturday
Chennai: The fast and smooth flowing course of the South India Rally produced a surprise leader at the end of day one on Saturday. As the cource is well-suited for the powerful Mitsubishi Evo X, JCT Rallying’s Samir Thapar (co-driver Gurinder Mann) dominated all the seven stages and left Indian rally ace Gaurav Gill in his wake. With four more stages to go on Sunday, Samir is enjoying a healthy one minute and 46.2seconds lead over the reigning Asia Pacific champion.
Piloting a Mahindra XUV 500, Gill winner of the previous two rounds of the Indian Rally Championship — was clearly outpaced by the lighter and more powerful Evos. The fact that PG Abhilash in an Evo VI got the better of Gill in four out of seven stages summed up Gill’s woes.Gill, however, was not surprised by the result.
“I was anticipating it. The stages are fast with lots of straights where the Evo with more power and being lighter had an advantage. I am not surprised that Samir made so much time on us,” said Gill, who is just 27 seconds ahead of third-placed Abhilash.Samir, who last won a National championship event in 1997 at theKarnataka 1000 Rally, wants to play it safe in the remaining four stages in a bid to end his victory drought. “After a long time, I have got a car that I wanted. In Nashik (first round), I had a lot of problems and I missed the second round in Coimbatore. But today, everything came together,” said Samir.
The day witnessed a few crashes and as many as eight retirements. The biggest of them was reigning INRC champion Amittrajit Ghosh’s. The Mahindra driver rolled his XUV 500 on the fifth stage.In the IRC 2000cc class, Bangalore’s Rahul Kanthraj (Vivek Bhatt) of Team Yokohama was ahead of Prithvi Dominic (Ravindra M.S.) by 57 seconds.
( Source : dc correspondent )
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