Running On Fumes

Gill’s triumph in the 2016 Asia Pacific Rally Championship provides the lone bright spot in the otherwise gloomy landscape of Indian rallying.

- Vivek Mukherji

There is every reason to applaud Gaurav Gill’s second Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC) title which he sealed in the fifth round of the championship in Malaysia. To say it has been an emphatic season for the country’s best rally driver would be an understatement. This year, after two consecutive seasons of frustration primarily due to a combination of mechanical failures, driver error and bad luck, he posted five straight wins in 2016 to take an unassailable lead in the championship with one last round to go, to be held in Chikmagalur, the coffee growing region of Karnataka, in December.

It would be the first time that Indian rally fans will be seeing him drive in an international-spec car in the country. For years, he has been peddling his craft in indigenously-developed machinery, which doesn’t really give an idea of his skill levels compared to when he is behind the wheels of a full-blown rally machine like the upgraded Skoda Fabia R5 that he drove this year. It seems the change of car this year brought a turnaround in his fortunes in the premier continental rally championship.