Gill leads overall after leg one of Indian Rally Championship round two in Coimbatore

Mahindra Adventure's Gaurav Gill leads the overall time sheet at the end of the first leg of the Rally of Coimbatore, which is the second round of the Indian Rally Championship.

Like last year, the rally is being held along with a circuit racing weekend and the cars showed up at the Kari Motor Speedway for a wet super special stage.

The Indian Rally Championship (IRC) has been opened up this year allowing Gill, Amittrajit Ghosh and Sandeep 'Sunny' Sidhu - all three works drivers for Mahindra with the XUV 500 - to compete for the overall championship crown.

Last year, the XUV 500s ran only in an SUV category (SUVINRC), in which Mahindra ran unopposed with no other manufacturer willing to field an entry; something that rally fans are hoping either Nissan or Renault - or at the very least Maruti-Suzuki - can be convinced to change by throwing their hat in the ring.

Gill along with co-driver Musa Sherif leads by 1:30 minutes from the Volkswagen Polo of Arjun Rao Aroor and co-driver Satish Rajgopal, which is also entered in the IRC 1600cc category where Aroor/Rajgopal lead Vikram Devadasen/Shrikanth and Phalguna Urs/Anoop Kumar.

Trailing Aroor in overall third place is Sidhu and co-driver PVS Murthy.

Rahul Kanthraj/Vivek Bhatt lead the IRC 2000cc class from Byram Godrej/AG Somayya and Prithvi Dominic/MS Ravindra.

The FMSCI 1600cc Cup is currently lead by B Raghu Nandan/K Suraj, KC Adith/KN Harish and Aniruddha Rangnekar/Nitin Jacob.

There was no sign of Samir Thapar and his red Mitsubishi Evo X on the dusty stages of the rally where he and then co-driver Vivek Punnosammy gained fame - followed by unnecessary but self-inflicted notoriety - for their failure to get along and keep the car in one piece last year.

Thapar apparently skipped the event after competing in the opening round of the IRC at Nasik this June.