Rally de North: Rao and Kumar wins INRC & IRC classes

The third round of the season ran from Gurgaon to the inner regions of Haryana, marking the return of Indian national rallying in North India after more than a decade.

The rally originally was suppose to run for eight stages, but SS3 and SS4 were cancelled due to track invasion by locals and animals.

In the INRC class, Rao (co-driver Satish Rajgopal) emerged as the comfortable winner in a customer Volkswagen Polo, covering the six competitive stages, winning half of them with a total time of 47m10s.

Karna Kadur (co-driver Nikhil Pai) finished nearly a minute adrift in second, while former APRC champion and Mahindra Adventure driver Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) could only manage third.

The home hero was hampered due to presence of multiple chicanes, who was driving the bulky Mahindra XUV 500.

"It wasn’t the best for our team and car but we still managed to pick up the third spot and that’s still good set of points in the bag," Gill said.

Despite finishing fifth with troubled suspension, Kolkata's Amittrajit Ghosh (co-driver Ashwin Naik) still leads the standings, heading into mid-season break.

Kumar wins IRC after DNF to Abhilash

Among the IRC contingent, Kumar (co-driver Honey) was declared the winner after runaway leader Samir Thapar retired in the final stage.

Kumar finished the rally in 1hr04m in his Mitsubishi, ahead of regular cross-country rally driver Bani Yadav (co-driver Shubh Kaur).

The female driver was the only other classified finisher in Yadav in the Volkswagen Polo.

In the INRC 2000 category Kadur took class win, with Bikku Babu (co-driver Milen George) second and Rahul Kanthraj (co-driver Vivek Bhatt).

Meanwhile, Jacob KJ (co-driver Manoj M) claimed victory in the FMSCI Cup class.