Gill wins Speed Indian National Rally Championship

Gaurav Gill codriver Musa Sherif of Team MRF on Sunday clinched the Speed Indian National Rally Championship for the year 2009 by winning the Coffee Day Rally of Chikmagalur the fifth and final round of the series that saw MRF achieving a 123 finishGill the 28year old from Delhi thus finished a wretched year on a bright note after having suffered 17 nonfinishes over the past 12 months And he just about managed to bring his Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia N home in one piece with the car struck in second gear The threeminute road penalty that his teammate Lohitt Urs codriver Shrikant Gowda took eventually helped Gill to finish first in the event after losing a lot of time due to the gear box problems It is certainly a great feeling to win the championship after all that I went through in the last one year I was anxious today to finish the event without any hitches but my car got stuck in the second gear that cost me a lot of time However I had a good overnight lead and that saw me through said Gill The victory took Gills championship points to 46 and though there are a couple of protests relating to the previous rounds pending his position is unlikely to be disturbed Urs and teammate Arjun Rao Aroor codriver Satish Rajagopal came in second and third respectively Gills victory was virtually sealed with Red Rooster Racings Vikram Mathias codriver PVS Murthy retired due to suspension problems at the start of the second Leg this morning It just had to happen at the wrong time This had not been the best year for me as I suffered mechancial problems in the first three rounds but the win in Kolkata put me in contention said Mathias Girijashankar Joshy codriver Chandramouli M won the 1600cc category ahead of Rahul Kanthraj codriver Vivek Bhatt and Joseph C Jos codriver Royce Kizhakoodan of Team DDL Sports but it was Sujay Suresh codriver Manoj Mohan who earned a leg point today and won the National title in this class with 50 points In the 1400 cc class Vikram Devadasen codriver Nikhil Pai won to annex the championship in his class but more importantly was ahead of Francis Jose codriver Manoj Mohan who was lying just two points behind at the start of the rally here Karna Kadur codriver Somonita Ghosh did just enough in the Rally Star Cup class by picking up leg points to annex the championship in this category with 52 points despite finishing sixth while Balram CG codriver Raghuram CG who won the event here ended up second on the leaderboard a mere two points behind In the Maruti Gypsy class Sandeep Sharma codriver Anmol Rampal of Team Thunderbolt won not only the event here but also the championship by adding 16 points to his tally of 46 that took him ahead of Kushwant Randhawa who finished second to wind up with 61 points