The New Normal: Indian Rally Championship

A new name and new machinery at the top of the timesheets to kick off the rallying season

If you want to know what’s happening with the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC), you’re out of luck this year. But that’s only because it is now called the Indian Rally Championship, IRC for short, which may cause confusion among some rally fans who used to follow the Intercontinental Rally Challenge that has now morphed into the European Rally Championship. But let’s not get into the head-spinning accounts of name changes among motorsport series and championships here!

Let’s take stock of the fact that the IRC seems to have a good amount of backing from two prominent automotive companies operating in India. Both Mahindra and Volkswagen have embraced motorsport and rallying as a means to raise their profile and learn a thing or two about thinking on their feet, in an automotive sense.
It has come as a welcome development for Indian rally drivers as names such as Gaurav Gill, Amittrajit Ghosh and Sandeep ‘Sunny’ Sidhu have found themselves in the position of making money off motorsport. Which was not always a foregone conclusion prior to these recent developments in Indian motorsport.

Four categories have been created for the competitors in India’s top rallying championship. IRC is open to more powerful four-wheel-drive machinery like the now infamous Samir Thapar’s Mitsubishi Evo X along with SUVs like Mahindra’s XUV 500 piloted by Gill, Ghosh and Sidhu. Gill and co-driver Musa Sherif took the crown in that category as well as topping the overall classifications.

IRC 2000 and IRC 1600 features slightly modified cars with corresponding cylinder capacities. Both categories were won by entries fielding Volkswagen Polos; Byram Godrej/Soumayya A G and Hrishikesh Thackersey/Ninad Mirajgaonkar, respectively.

And maybe as a reminder of years gone by there is even an FMSCI 1600 Cup in which the Baleno of Aniruddha Rangnekar/Arjun Mehta triumphed.

There are definitely things to like and be hopeful of in the new normal for Indian rallying. But getting one’s hopes up for more manufacturers to join the fray may be a bit premature.