Joshy, Srikanth champs in Grand Krishna Rally

Despite teething problems, seasoned campaigners Girijashankar Joshy and navigator Srikanth Gowda won the Overall and Pro-Expert titles in the Grand Krishna Rally of Chikmagalur, the first round of the Indian National TSD Rally Championship here that saw just two seconds separating the top-five finishers.

Joshy, who hails from the nearby town of Kalasa, and Mudigere's Gowda, pipped the Hyderabad-Erode combination of Sachin Singh (Hyderabad) and Prakash M. (Erode) on the basis of more number of zero penalties after the two pairs tied with 23 seconds penalty timings.

Finishing third Overall and in Pro-Expert were Kolkata's Ajgar Ali and his Erode navigator Mohammed Musthafa, who edged out National Champions from Erode, Karthick Maruti and Sankar Anand with one second separating the two.

Maruti and Anand had tied with Bengaluru's Arvind J. and Chandrashekar M. with 25 seconds penalty. The Erode pair had six zero penalties to the Bengaluru crew's four and thus finished fourth in Overall and Pro-Expert categories.

Amarnath G.T. (Bengaluru) and navigator Mokhtiyar Ahmed (Erode) took the honours in the Pro-Stock class ahead of last year's national runner-up Saurav Chatterjee and Sabatullah Khan from Kolkata.

"We are obviously very happy to win the title but we were very lucky. Initially, we had a lot of problems since it was after three years Srikanth and I were getting together for a TSD event. Luckily, whatever we tried, clicked," said Joshy, a former National Champion in the Stage rallying.

"It was my first placing in a rally with Srikanth after eight years. The two trophies (Overall and Pro-Expert) that I won here took my collection to 102 since I entered motorsport in 2003.

Final classification:

Overall/Pro-Expert: Girijashankar Joshy (Kalasa)/Srikanth Gowda (Mudigere) 1(00:00:23 secs penalty, including 7 zeroes); Sachin Singh (Hyderabad)/Prakash M. (Erode) 2 (00:00:23, 6 zeroes); S.K. Ajgar Ali (Kolkata)/M.L. Mohammed Musthafa (Erode) 3 (00:00:24).

Pro-Stock: Amarnath G.T. (Bengaluru)/Mokhtiyar Ahmed (Erode) 1 (00:00:37); Saurav Chatterjee/Sabatullah Khan (both Kolkata) 2 (00:00:44); V. Sekar/Natarajan G. (both Erode) 3 (00:01:08).