Kohima: The two-day fifth JK Tyre Hornbill Rally, boasting of a pan-National entry list and which doubles up as the fourth round of the FMSCI Indian National TSD Rally Championship, will commence here on Wednesday with a ceremonial flag-off at the Indira Gandhi Stadium presided by Dr. Chumben Murry, Minister for Agriculture, Government of Nagaland.
than 20 top drivers and navigators of the country, including a six-car Tata Motors Full Throttle team, will be competing in the Indian National TSD Rally Championship organized by the Nagaland Adventure and Motor Sports Association (NAMSA) in association with Berunda Adventure Sports Club, Mysore with support from the Government of Nagaland.
In addition to this, more than 50 participants, in both four and two-wheeler categories, will be competing for the local championship.
Crews from the neighbouring states like Assam and Meghalaya as well as from Delhi, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka Chandigarh, Goa and West Bengal will be seen in action.
The participants will traverse 140 Kms through parts of National highway 29, Touphema tourist village and culminate at the Naga Heritage Village, Kisama.
The TSD INRC should again witness a close battle considering that the previous three rounds have thrown up different overall winners.
Karthick Maruti and his navigator Sankar Anand, with a win in the third round at Jaipur and two second place finishes, head the championship standings in the Overall and Pro-Expert categories with 65 points.
They are followed by two Full Throttle crews of Sachin Singh and Chandrasekar M in a Tata Grande with 43 points, and the husband-wife combination of Satish Gopalkrishnan and Savera D’Souza driving a Tata Vista with 35.
Sachin Singh and Anand won the second round in Ranchi while Satish Gopalkrishnan and Savera D’Souza took the top honours in the first round at Bangalore.
In the Pro-Stock class, Full Throttle’s experienced pair of Chidananda Murthy and BS Sujith Kumar, also in a Tata Vista, head the leaderboard with two wins and 65 points, and they will be looking to consolidate their position at the top.
While GS.Joshy.and Chandramouli (Tata Vista) and Kuriakose Elias Paarel and Srikanth GM (Vista) are the other two Full Throttle crews, local hero Along Aiyer with V Sekar as his navigator will complete the Tata team driving a Sumo Gold.
The Tata Full Throttle team also leads in the Constructors’ championship with 111 points ahead of Volkswagen (52) and Mahindra (25).
By Indian Sports News Network
