Gill takes lead in Speed Rally de Kolkata

Durgapur: Gaurav Gill of Team MRF and co-driver Musa Sherif took the day one honours in the Speed

Rally de Kolkata, the third round of the 2009 Speed-Indian National Rally Championship here today. Driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia in the 2000cc N+ category, Gill topped the overall leaderboard at the end of leg-1, which consisted of six special stages. Gill`s arch-rival and defending national champion Vikram Mathias of Red Rooster Racing, also in a Cedia, retired and so did two other MRF entries in this showpiece class - Arjun Balu (co-driver Sujith Kumar) and Arjun Rao Aroor (co-driver Satish Rajagopal). It left Red Rooster`s Amittrajit Ghosh (co-driver Ashwin Naik), winner of the round one in Coimbatore, trailing Gill by 28 seconds, but ahead of MRFs Lohitt Urs (co-driver M Chandramouli) by 27 seconds. Local lad Ghosh showed controlled aggression and did not go all out with an eye on the championship points. "Last year, I just had to finish the last rally and a second place would have given me the national championship. But I had a DNF and lost everything. So this year I am wise and careful," Ghosh said. "Tomorrow, it is a question of holding positions. After we failed to finish in K-1000, I am determined to finish the event here, even if it means settling for a second position," he added. While the top guns fell out owing to off-road excursions, the day ended on a bitter note, especially for Red Rooster after Mathias, powering down a high-speed left-hander, slammed into Balu`s stricken car that had gone off the road. Although Mathias continued, he went off in the very next Special Stage. Down the grid, the competition was fairly intense in the 1600cc class (Maruti Baleno) until early leader Joseph Jos (co-driver Royce Kizhikoodan), of DDL Sports and winner in Bangalore, retired on the penultimate stage as S Sujay (co-driver Varun S) took over to lead Girijashankar Joshy (co-driver Srikant Gowda) by 17 seconds. In third spot was Rahul Kanthraj (co-driver Vivek Bhatt). Bureau Report