Misfortune for Amittrajit Ghosh meant Karna Kadur’s India Rally win and sixth place in the K1000 was enough for him to take the title.
Variety is the spice of life, as the saying goes, and the 2016 FMSCI Indian National Rally Championship got treated to plenty of that this season in terms of everything from its venues, controversies and even the contenders for the title.
This was crystal clear when the India Rally saw the INRC and IRC field compete alongside the main event of the APRC. The memories of the botched Rally de North in Haryana was still fresh in my mind as I took the long flight to Bangalore before setting off on road to Chikmagalur. Normally it’s around two and a half hours by plane, but the morning fog these days generally tends to be as thick as daal makhani and decidedly less appealing!
Despite the vapid assurances of the airport ground staff, we waited in the craft for over four..HOURS. That’s right, we sat in the plane for longer than the actual flight time! I guess I would have to wait a little longer before getting a fix of some proper rallying on proper rally stages. But as it turned out, the wait was worth it.
RALLYING IN EARNEST
Finally, six hours later, I had landed in a far clearer climate and I could finally start looking forward to seeing national rallying take to the kind of stages one associates with rallying. The cost-based restrictions remained despite the welcome change in scenery but seeing drivers being challenged on super technical and tricky stages brought a big smile to my face. Having seen cars essentially take on what were extended speed sprints along a highway in Haryana, the forest stages of the Coffee Day estates was a breath of fresh air. Literally too due to being so far away from Delhi and any major urban centre.
The focus could shift to seeing Karna Kadur and Amittrajit Ghosh battle for the INRC title in vehicles that provided as big of a contrast as between the Rally de North and the India Rally.
Kadur was in a Group N Volkswagen Polo driving for Team Yokohama while Ghosh, likely to be the next big thing in Indian rallying after Gill, was piloting a factory prepped Mahindra XUV 500. And the battle between the two started at the super special stage itself. Ghosh was trying every trick in the book to gain time over the lighter, nimbler Polo, which included cutting corners and taking off bunting tape and posts. His commitment carried forward to the first leg of the rally where he was not one of the 13 drivers to suffer an incident. A heavy crash for Ilyas Younus was a reminder of what could happen if a driver lost his focus. Incredibly enough, Ghosh was ahead of Kadur by just 7.6 seconds in an event that definitely didn’t favour the XUV 500, regardless of Mahindra’s marketing slogan of the SUV being ‘cheetah inspired’!
Mechanical issues on the second leg, however, dropped Ghosh out of contention for the win and even a podium finish as Kadur took the win to inch closer to the title.
Despite a win for Ghosh and only a sixth place finish for Kadur at the final round – the K1000 Rally in Bangalore – the latter had enough of a points gap to be crowned the INRC champion for 2016. A great antidote to a season that the FMSCI hopes will form the foundation for a steady and marketable championship format.
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