Coimbatore : Lohitt Urs and co-driver Shrikant Gowda, in a Mitsubishi Evo VIII, comfortably defended their overnight lead to emerge Overall champions in the Rally of Coimbatore, the third round of the FMSCI Indian Rally Championship that concluded on Saturday.
Mysuru-based Urs did not need to push himself especially after his closest rival Arjun Rao Aroor (co-driver Satish Rajagopal), trailing by over a minute, failed to start Leg-2 on Saturday due to a mechanical failure in his Volkswagen Polo R2. Thus, Urs could afford to be in cruise mode as he barely turned a wheel wrong to cap a brilliant performance.
Also on the winning side were the overnight leaders in other categories, Bengaluru’s Rahul Kantraj (co-driver Vivek Bhatt) in the IRC 2000 and Karna Kadur (Vivek Ponnusamy) in the IRC 1600, and Kerala’s Adith KC (Harish KN) in the FMSCI 1600 Cup.
For Urs, who had finished fourth Overall in the previous round in Nashik, it was a victory to savour even granting that his arch-rival Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) of Mahindra Adventure team retired Friday, and Aroor did not start Leg-2 owing to a mechanical failure that was detected after he drove into the Service park before the commencement of the day’s competitive sections.
.jpg)
Mahindra Adventurehad some satisfaction as they filled the other two podium spots as Sunny Sidhu (PVS Murthy) finished four minutes, 28.5 seconds behind Urs and Amittrajit Ghosh (Ashwin Naik) came in third, some 31.4 seconds further adrift.
The intense competition between Urs and Gill, who re-joined the rally under the Super Rally format, was very much in evidence as both bettered their Friday’s timings.
