Pune: Defending champion R Natraj will be the pick of riders as Malwa region gets ready to host over 45 bikers including four ladies in the second round of the MRF MoGrip FMSCI National 2-wheeler rally championship here on Sunday.
Natraj rode his powerful TVS RTR 450FX bike to a nail-biting win despite some malfunction in his brakes in early stage and now he will look to have uninterrupted ride through a challenging course that has been marked out by AW Events, the organisers of the first four rounds scheduled in Western India.
“Like in Gujarat last week, this will be the second straight year that Indore will be hosting the 2-wheeler rally championship round. We got tremendous response from the motorsports enthusiasts in Indore so we decided to come back here,” said Shyam Kothari, Director of Godspeed Racing, the promoters of the championship.
“The back-to-back rounds has caught up attention of the two-wheeler riders and we are getting good response in the Locals class, apart from the championship classes,” said Amit Waghchoure, Clerk-of-Course of the Rally of Indore.
“We at AW Events have always endeavoured to provide safe and challenging environment for racing and have set a high benchmark specially for rallying, which is fast gaining popularity, especially among the young generation,” said Waghchoure.
Indore will see four women competing in the special Ladies class with TVS Racing’s Aishwarya Pissay carrying the mantle for the women in the otherwise male dominated sport.
After a gap of one week the championship will move to Pune for the third round on May 19-20 and Nashik will play host to fourth and final round in the western region, on May 25-27.
As always, the ceremonial start of the rally has been scheduled on Saturday at the Hotel Bee Town before they take to the dusty and challenging course on Sunday.
The Rally of Indore is being powered by TVS Apache and Indian Oil Servo and is being supported by Hotel Bee Town.
Besides Natraj and Aishwarya, TVS Racing will look for a continued dominating show from Rajendra RE in Class 4 SuperSports 260B, which was completely dominated by Team TVS Racing, which won all the places on the podium.
Suhail Ahmed and Samuel Jacob had finished behind Rajendra to assert TVS Racing’s control over the class.
Every city will run a local class along with the national championship. Likewise, Indore will witness Star of Madhya Pradesh category, aimed at encouraging local participation in the two-wheeler rally.
The rally will be run in three rounds of 50-km each with a total competition distance of 86 kilometres.
