Gaurav Gill heads South India Rally INRC 2022

The Madras Motor Sports Club’s MRF 45th South India Rally, which will be held here from April 22 to 24, will kick off a new season by serving as the first round of the Blue Band Sports FMSCI Indian National Rally Championship, which has a new promoter.

The three-day race had 48 participants, led by Himachal’s Aditya Thakur (co-driver Virender Singh), the freshly minted 2021 Overall National champion who also won the INRC-3 division. Thakur has been promoted to the INRC-2 level for the 2022 season.

Other top competitors in the highly competitive field include Delhi’s Gaurav Gill (Musa Sherif, Kasargod), Bengaluru’s Karna Kadur (Nikhil Pai), who won the Asia Cup round of the FIA Asia-Pacific Rally Championship at the same venue last month, and Kerala’s defending INRC-2 champion Fabid Ahmer (Sanath G).

The Super Special Stage and one of the two Special Stages, as well as the Rally Headquarters and the Service Park, will be held at the MMRT circuit in Sriperumbudur, around 35 kilometres from Chennai.

The Rally’s entire course is around 300 kilometres, with a competitive segment of roughly 123 kilometres. On Friday (April 22), the participants will perform a reconnaissance of the route, with the Stages taking place over the next two days.

Last month, the 2021 season, which had been postponed due to COVID-19 constraints, was finished. Even though the MRF 45th South India Rally had a very short turnaround period of around three weeks before the start of the 2022 season, a large number of entries were received.

In the elite INRC overall category, Amittrajit Ghosh of England and his co-driver Ashwin Naik of Mangaluru, who had been among the top championship candidates, have elected to forgo this weekend’s rally.