Last Gasp: The K 1000 Finals At Bangalore

The titles had already been decided in bangalore during the k 1000 but the final round of the INRC season in Chikmagalur still delivered on drama

For all but one stage of the Coffee Day Rally - which was the fifth and final round of the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) – Karamjit Singh looked supremely in control. His R2 spec Volkswagen Polo was flying and was around four minutes ahead of Arjun Rao Aroor’s INRC 1600 class Polo in the overall classification. And yet it was Aroor, who was beaming at the podium ceremony while celebrating victory even though the time sheets still showed him as four minutes behind Singh at the end of the ninth special stage of the rally.

The missing piece of this puzzle was an incident on the tenth and final special stage of the Coffee Day Rally where the three bolts holding the lower suspension arm of the R2 Polo of Singh and co-driver Jagdev Singh fell off.

The car came to a halt due to the damage incurred on the wheel. The tenth stage was cancelled after the car could not be moved and started to block the participants who followed him.

The former FIA Production World Rally Championship and Asia Pacific Rally Championship winner said the only hint came sometime during the ninth stage.

“We could feel the car getting too loose at the front,” Singh told autoX. “Before the start of the final stage we got out to check out the car and couldn’t see anything wrong so decided to just take it easy. But then this happens just as the stage was about to end.”

One man’s loss…is how the old saying goes. Aroor was more than happy to pick up the pieces as he and co-driver Satish Rajagopal negotiated the nine stages that counted to the final result four minutes faster than Vikram Devadasen and co-driver Ashwin Naik.

The big deal in mentioning the four-minute gap is that Devadasen and Naik’s Mitsubishi Cedia was competing in the INRC 2000 class as opposed to Aroor and Rajagopal’s INRC 1600 Polo.

It was validation to a fair extent of the capability of the new Polo. The same could be said about SUVNRC class Mahindra Adventure’s XUV 500 as well.

The big, heavy diesel car was second fastest overall –three minutes ahead of Devadasen – in the hands of cross-country rally star Sunny Sidhu and co-driver Srinivas Murthy P V.

New equipment trumping the old, fitting way to bid farewell to 2013, I guess.