Taking The Beaten Track: The Indian National Rally Championship

The Indian National Rally Championship tried to grab some much needed attention by taking a familiar ‘path’ at Coimbatore

It’s not been an easy ride for the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) of late in India. The sport has struggled to grab attention while its cross country counterpart has cemented its popularity as competitors field popular SUVs in the Xtreme categories.
With the Indian car industry also favouring SUVs along with small cars, it has strengthened the cache of cross country rallies among motor sport fans.

To the extent that the INRC now also features an SUV class in which Mahindra has dominated with its XUV 500s piloted by rally star Gaurav Gill, former Desert Storm winner Sunny Siddhu and INRC rally winner Lohitt Urs. In fact the three Mahindra drivers form the entire SUV class entry list!

It has made people take notice for sure, but there still is the issue of making sure that rallies get enough media eyeballs.

In that regard, the idea of Coimbatore Rally organizers clubbing the event together with the opening round of the JK Tyre Racing Championship was definitely a novel approach that generated a fair amount of curiosity.

Live media coverage of the stages was, however, restricted to one section of a stage with some artificial jumps and a final super special run at the Kari Motor Speedway itself. The sight of cars cutting corners and drifting was popular, even if restricted to a handful of those who tried it out.

Defending INRC champion Amittrajit Ghosh and co-driver Ashwin Naik were smooth and steady at the super special and the rest of the rally to take the win.

It almost made one forget that the INRC still has not found a replacement for India Mines Group as title sponsor and that only five rallies are listed for 2013.

Well, that and seeing the likes of Karamjit Singh prop up the Indian Rally Championship (IRC) class while Samir Thapar and co-driver Vivek Punosammy became YouTube stars about three weeks after the rally!

There’s certainly much to like about the whole ordeal (as it can be sometimes) of going to a remote location to follow a rally closely.

All the experience needs is more of a push in the right direction. However even with a high profile event like Bangalore’s K 1000 rally, that seems to be very much a work in progress as of now.