Tanveer wins Godspeed Rally of Pune

PUNE: TVS Racing rider Abdul Waheed Tanveer rode his TVS RTR450 through the challenging terrain and took a giant step towards winning the national title when he beat his teammate R Nataraj by over 2 minutes and 28 seconds, at the Pune leg of the MRF MoGrip FMSCI National Rally championship for two-wheelers in Velhe near here on Sunday.
On the stage that started with rugged off-road followed by plain gravel leading to route of boulders before ending with loose sand, Tanveer took full advantage of the absence of the defending champion KP Aravind to emerged as the best rider of the 'Godspeed Rally of Pune', which brought in two-wheeler rally to Pune after a gap of over two decades.
The six-round MRF MoGrip FMSCI National Rally Championship for two-wheelers along with six-round MRF MoGrip FMSCI Supercross championship is being conducted by the Pune-based Godspeed Racing.
Tanveer clocked 57 minutes 44 seconds to complete the challenging stage that was run thrice to complete the mandatory 54-km to make a national rally leg.
Natraj was second in 1 minute and 0.12 seconds.
Of the 46 competitors who started on early Sunday morning, only 38 completed all the three stages. Eight competitors did not finish due to various reasons on the 18-km stage that had plenty of challenges and blind spots that stretched the riders to the extreme.
In the absence of Aravind, Suhail Ahmed of Ten10 Racing, took the third position overall on his Hero Impulse bike. Suhail, competing in the Super Sport 260B class, clocked the time of 1 minute 02.06 second that even bested the Super bikers in Expert Class A, which should give him a lot of morale boost.
The Expert Class was again won by Vishwas SD, a privateer from Bengaluru, on his Yamaha WR250 bike clocking 1:08.58. Yashraj Rathod, a privateer from Indore, finished second in 1:11.44 on his bike TXC 310R.
Bhosale Star of Pune
Lokesh Bhosale, riding a Hero Impulse, won the 'Star of Pune' title by completing the stages in 1 minute 16.51 seconds ahead of Gaurav Premallu (1:25.04) and Kishor Jadhav (1:28.46), all riding on Impulse.