Coimbatore Day One: Dean and Gagan Give the Rally Its First Shape
Six Saturday stages put Dean Mascarenhas and Gagan Karumbaiah at the head of a fast, carefully prepared Coimbatore rally, with new cars and hard mechanical lessons already reshaping the weekend.
Photograph: Blueband Sports / official event material- Day 1
- Six stages completed
- Road
- Smooth and fast gravel stages
- Leaders
- Dean Mascarenhas / Gagan Karumbaiah
- Field
- 64 cars in the published event classification trail
- Round
- INRC Round 2 · coefficient 1.5
The Rally of Coimbatore began with the feeling of a championship getting its breath back. After the long pause following Round 1, the national field returned to a set of smooth, fast and well prepared gravel stages. Recce had given the crews a clear picture of the road. Competition gave them the reminder that a clean surface can still punish a small mistake.
Dean Mascarenhas and Gagan Karumbaiah set the first serious reference in the Volkswagen Polo. Their recent WRC Chile programme with TSI Racing had given them fresh international mileage, and the benefit showed in the way they managed the opening loop. The pace was immediate, though the driving remained measured enough to protect the car.
The road rewarded a precise recce
Black Thunder, S.M. Agro and Sharadha Terry were each used twice on Saturday. The first pass established the grip and the braking references. The second pass asked the crews to turn that knowledge into a repeatable rhythm while the loose gravel moved towards the outside of the corners.
The stages looked smooth from the roadside, though speed changed their character from inside the car. A tidy line could open the next corner. A slightly late brake could leave the car searching for grip. The best crews had to keep the notes clean, place the Polo or Fiesta accurately and make the same decision when the road became faster than it had felt during recce.
The leaders had different routes to the same pace
Karna Kadur and Musa Sherif kept the Arka Motorsports Polo in the leading conversation. Jason Saldanha and Srinivas Murthy P V put the new Peugeot 208 into the front fight on its Indian rally debut. Naveen Puligilla and Santhosh Thomas brought the Ford Fiesta into the leading group, adding another familiar shape to a top order that had become technically varied.
The result was an enjoyable contrast in machinery. Multiple Volkswagen Polo builds carried the experience of established Indian teams. The Peugeot arrived with a new reference to establish. The Fiesta brought its own balance and pace. Every car asked its crew a slightly different question, although the answer still had to be delivered over the same fast road.
A new Citroen arrives with no patience for ceremony
Anushriya Gulati and Karan Aukta gave the Citroen C3 an impressive first weekend in the national field. The car finished the opening day in the upper part of the overall order and immediately entered the INRC 3T conversation. Its performance was close enough to the INRC 2 cars to make the debut meaningful on the timing sheets as well as in the service park.
Aditya Thakur and Virender Kashyap provided a different technical story. Their naturally aspirated 1.6 Polo was running among turbocharged cars, yet it remained near the front of the overall classification. Ritesh M. Guttedar, Pragathi Gowda, Tarushi Vikram and the other class leaders added depth to a Saturday that was already carrying multiple headline.
The first problems arrived at full speed
The crew reports from the day carried their own sequence of reversals. Fabid Ahmer had been running strongly before a mechanical failure ended his rally on SS8. Arvind Dheerendra rolled, changing the shape of the INRC 3 order. Phoebe Dale and Shahid Salman worked through gearbox trouble. Daraius Shroff and Arjun Dheerendra also suffered gearbox failure. Jeet Jhabakh lost time to a driveshaft problem in the i20 and then restarted.
Those incidents explain why a compact rally can feel much larger from inside the service park. A fault changes the next stage, the next service decision and the amount of pressure carried into the final loop. The leaders had the advantage after Saturday, though the rally had left enough distance for every surviving crew to change the story on Sunday.
Six stages created the first order. Three final stages would decide which parts of it deserved to remain.
ViPeople Day 1 reportSunday still had work to do
The final loop returned to Black Thunder, S.M. Agro and Sharadha Terry. The roads would be familiar, though the grip would not be identical after a full day of traffic. Dean and Gagan had to preserve the lead. Karna and Musa had to find time without spending the car. Jason, Naveen and the class leaders had to keep the machines moving through one last set of fast decisions.
