Kadur overcomes challenges to take lead

The Bengaluru combination of Karna Kadur and co-driver Nikhil Pai, representing Arka Motorsports, survived a puncture and a cracked windscreen to seize the overall lead in the 44th South India Rally, which is a part of the FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship (Asia Cup) and the concluding round of the FMSCI Indian National Rally Championship.

The retirement of Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) here on Saturday came as a shocker since the lower arm of his Mahindra XUV 300 broke. There is no clarity on whether Gill would rejoin under the ‘Super Rally’ format on Sunday, when five more ‘Stages’ would be run in the reverse direction. In all, 33 of the 43 starters finished Leg-1 of South India Rally.

Kadur clocked consistent timings to take a 19-second lead over Younus Ilyas (Aniruddha Ranganekar) from Race Concepts while Amittrajit Ghosh (Ashwin Naik) came third. In the National Championship, Kadur, Dean Mascarenhas (Gagan Karumbaiah) and Ilyas occupied the (overall) top-three spots in that order at the end of Leg-1.

Results: FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship (Asia Cup): Leg-1 classification: 1. Karna Kadur/Nikhil Pai (55 minutes, 30.200 seconds); 2. Younus Ilyas/Aniruddha Ranganekar (55:49.200); 3. Amittrajit Ghosh/Ashwin Naik (55:49.800).

FMSCI Indian National Rally Championship: Overall/INRC: 1. Kadur/Pai (55:30.200); 2. Dean Mascarenhas/Gagan Karumbaiah (55:49.000); 3. Ilyas/Aniruddha (55:49.200).

INRC-2: 1. Mascarenhas/Karumbaiah (55:49.000); 2. Fabid Ahmer/G Sanath (57:03.700); 3. Chetan Shivram/Dilip Sharan (57:04.100).

INRC-3: 1. Aditya Thakur/Virender Kashyap (56:29.400); 2. Syed Salman Ahmed/BK Rishabh (57:48.400); 3. Kuber Sharma/Kunal Kashyap (58:04.200).

INRC-4: 1. Mujeeb Rehman/Ravindra Kumar (59:40.200); 2. Vaibhav Marathe/Harsha Vardhana (59:45.600); 3. Prakhyat Shirole/SSB Arjun (1:00:43.400).