Motorsport: All eyes on Lohit, Gill at penultimate round

Lohit Urs – gunning for glory

Lohit Urs, fresh from his victory in Chikmagalur, poses the biggest threat to defending champion Gaurav Gill at the Rally of Odisha, the sixth of the seven-round Indian National Rally Championship. The first five rounds were held at Nashik, Chennai, Coimbatore, Bangalore and Chikmagalur.

Gaurav Gill, who is leading the overall championship, needs to stay ahead of the second-placed Urs to clinch the issue here, with only the last leg at Kolkota remaining. To stay in contention for the National title, Urs should win here with at least a three-point margin ahead of Gill. In the 2000 cc class, a fierce fight is expected between Rahul Kantharaj (Vivek Bhatt) and Karna Kadur, whose navigator Somonnita Ghosh is the only woman competitor in the Indian National Rally Championship.

Urs will not be donning MRF colours for the last two rounds. Instead, the popular speedster from Mysore will drive a Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia tuned by Red Rooster Race Performance as an individual entry at the inaugural Rally of Odisha.

In the 2000 cc N+ category, Urs and co-driver PVS Murthy will be the only competition to Team MRF, who fielded only two teams instead of the regular four. It may be recalled that veteran Arjun Balu announced his retirement after 17 years of rallying at Chikmagalur last month to leave Gaurav Gill and co-driver Musa Sherif as the leading contenders while youngster Amittrajit Ghosh of Kolkota will be the other entry for Team MRF with Ashwin Naik as his navigator.

The spectator friendly super special stage will be held at Vani Vihar where the fans can watch high-class rally action from a vantage point as the cars go on a 1.5km lap twice on Friday at 2pm. “With flowing corners all around, the super special stage will be fast and entertaining,” said Ramesh Mahaptra of Kalinga Motor Sports Club. “There is a lot of interest in motorsports in Orissa and for the first time we have managed to get the National Championship here and we hope that will create a wider base for the sport. We have made sure that safety aspects are in place. All the evacuation routes are marked, and extractors and ambulances are ready.”

With a stage cancelled, the rally will run three special stages on Saturday and three on Sunday. The rally will consist of 113 km of special stage rallying while the transport section is a shade over 200 km to make a total distance of 314 km as scheduled initially.