Satish-Chethan duo tame RFC 2022

 Defending champs Kabir-Dushyant from Chandigarh pushed to second

After a week-long battle among 27 of India's best off-roaders, Satish Kumar and co-driver Chethan Chengappa, both in their late thirties from Karnataka, emerged as the overall champions in the Rainforest Challenge (RFC) India 2022 which concluded at Panaji.

This is the maiden RFC India win for Kumar and the third time as a co-driver for Chengappa. The duo won the eighth edition of India's toughest off-road motorsport competition with an overall score of 1895 points out of 2500. This score was based on their performance in the 25 Special Stages (SS) or challenges.

With a deficit of 70 points, the pair of defending champions Kabir Waraich and Dushyant Khosla from Chandigarh, finished in second position. N Abhinav Reddy and Vishuthi Varun from Hyderabad came third with a further difference of 91 points. Two teams from Goa finished in top-5. The team led by Cedric Jordan DaSilva and Aster Dias claimed fourth place with 1631 points and the duo of Dattaraj Raut Dessai and Siddesh Yadav Naik, with 1585 points, bagged the fifth spot.

Satish Kumar, who is an architect from Bengaluru, expressed his happiness on winning the coveted off-road motorsport championship of India. "It is so amazing that I have no words to say. It took seven attempts since 2014 when the India edition of RFC Malaysia was launched for me to make it to the overall podium. Now I feel on top of the world," said Kumar. "It feels really good. All our hard work has paid off," added co-driver Chethan Chengappa.

Talking about their performance this year, Satish said: "Something would go wrong with our Gypsy every day in our first SS of the day. I have blown more than six batteries during the event and we faced constant mechanical and electrical issues.