Team Mahindra Adventure driver Gaurav Gill won the SUV NRC category race with a strong performance in his XUV 500 in the Rally of Coimbatore here today.
In the INRC (Group-N) class, reigning national champion Amittrajit Ghosh and Ashwin Naik were in line to add their title wins of Nasik and Chennai for a memorable hat-trick.
In all, the event witnessed nine withdrawals from a total of 32 competitors.
Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) finished on top clocking 1hr.05mins.13.4 seconds after receiving a 'road penalty' of two minutes to be placed second behind leader Samir Thapar (Vivek Ponnusamy) of JCT Rallying.
Gill and his navigator, however, continued to lead the top-end IRC class ahead of Malaysian Karamjit Singh (Jagdev Singh).
Former World Rally champion Karamjit Singh of team Slideways Industries' Volkswagen Polo clocked 01:06:58.0 to be the third quickest, while Ghosh, leader in the INRC class and driving a Mitsubishi Cedia (Group-N), was fourth in 01:06:53.1.
Two Slideways Industries entries, former National champion Vikram Mathias (Chandramouli) and Sirish Chandran (Nikhil Pai), both driving the VW Polo, were among the drivers who retired midway.
