Driving a Volkswagon Polo, TSD champions Vishnu Singh of Jaipur with navigator Adithya Anthony of Bangalore ranked first on Day Two of The Second Uttarakhand Car Rally on Tuesday. The rally started from Dehradun on February 2. Vishnu and Adithya clocked total penalty of 2.26 minutes at the rally. Ajgar Ali of Kolkata driving a Grand Vitara, with navigator M Mustafa of Tamil Nadu were close on the heels of the first team, clocking a penalty of 2.32 minutes at the end of the second day of the rally.
With snowfall throughout the night, Auli was covered in a blanket of snow when the competitors started out early morning. All vehicles had to use snow chains on the tyres to traverse over 12 kilometers of the snow-covered road towards Joshimath. Rally director Vijay Parmar said that the overall speed had to be brought down at 10 kilometers an hour to allow rallyists to cross this difficult patch. On account of the delay caused here, the last competitive stage of the rally from Chaukuthiya to Masi had to be cancelled.
After traversing about 280 kilometers on country roads, the rallyists reached Ramnagar on the east of the Jim Corbett Park in the evening.
At the third place were Pratap Thakur (Pune) with navigator Dhiraj Arora (Chandigarh), driving a Gypsy for Team Maruti. Thakur and Arora clocked total penalty of 2.40 minutes. At the fourth place were Amol Satoskar (Goa) with navigator G Natarajan (Tamil Nadu), driving an SX4 for Team Maruti, with penalty of 2.46 minutes. At the fifth place on Day Two were Sachin Singh and Prakash of Secunderabad, driving a Tata Xenon, with total penalty of 3.12 minutes.
The Second Uttarakhand Adventure Car Rally has been organised by Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board (UTDB) in association with Himalayan Motorsport, the premier Shimla-based motorsport club. Himalayan Motorsport organises the Raid De Himalaya, one of the top ten toughest rallies in the world. Uttarakhand Tourism Minister Dinesh Dhanai had flagged off the Uttarakhand Adventure Car Rally at its ceremonial flag-off on February 1.
Uttarakhand Secretary Tourism Uma Kant Panwar said motorsport is enabling the state to showcase its excellent road network and highly picturesque tourist destinations. On the last and final day of the rally on February 4, the rallyists will move from Ramnagar to Dehradun. The rally route will cover approximately 1000 kilometers in the state.
Uttarakhand Adventure Car Rally offers highly attractive prize money of Rs 5 lakh, Rs 3 lakh and Rs 2 lakh for the top three teams respectively, and a special prize of Rs 1 lakh for the all-women’s team which performs the best. The rally is being supported by Maruti Suzuki and JK Tyres.