Coimbatore Day Two: Dean and Gagan Finish What They Started

Sunday at Coimbatore was short on distance and heavy with consequence. Three stages remained after Saturday’s six, and every crew arrived with a different version of the same problem. The leaders had to protect the rally. The crews behind them needed time. The cars that had survived trouble needed one more clean passage to the finish.

Dean Mascarenhas and Gagan Karumbaiah handled the final loop with the calm that had defined their rally. Their Polo reached the final control in 01:36:19.777, giving the crew a 23.482 second margin over Karna Kadur and Musa Sherif. The result was Dean and Gagan’s overall victory and the clearest national result of their return from WRC competition.

The final loop rewarded judgement

Black Thunder 3, S.M. Agro 3 and Sharadha Terry 3 were the last questions. The road had been cleaned by the opening cars, the loose surface had collected in familiar places and the crews had to decide how much speed the remaining grip could support.

Karna and Musa kept the pressure on in the Arka Motorsports Polo. Jason Saldanha and Srinivas Murthy P V brought the new Peugeot 208 home in third with a 01:37:50.400 total. Naveen Puligilla and Santhosh Thomas finished fourth in the Ford Fiesta at 01:38:09.237, with Aditya Thakur and Virender Kashyap fifth overall in the naturally aspirated 1.6 Polo.

Naveen gives the Fiesta a front-running result

Naveen’s fourth place deserves more than a line in the result. The Ford Fiesta stayed with the leading Polos and the new Peugeot over the complete route, and its 01:38:09.237 classification placed Naveen and Santhosh among the weekend’s principal performances. Their result also gave the championship another competitive car to watch as the season moves on.

The new cars leave Coimbatore with useful answers

Jason and Srinivas gave the Peugeot 208 a podium on its Indian rally debut. Anushriya Gulati and Karan Aukta took the Citroen C3 to eighth overall and first in INRC 3T with 01:39:23.810. The C3 ran close to the INRC 2 cars in the overall order, which makes the debut especially valuable for the people developing and driving it.

Aditya and Virender’s fifth overall showed what a naturally aspirated 1.6 Polo could do against turbocharged opposition. Ritesh M. Guttedar and Suraj M finished tenth. Pragathi Gowda and Trisha Alonkar were eleventh. Tarushi Vikram and Athreya Kousgi placed seventeenth overall while carrying the Women’s and Junior battles into the final classification.

Tarushi Vikram and Athreya Kousgi also put a sharper mark on the INRC 3 story. The official stage timing marks their crew as the fastest INRC 3 crew on SS08, a standout stage result inside a seventeenth-place overall finish and a weekend that combined the Women’s and Junior battles.

The finishers carried their own rallies home

The timing service records 52 classified crews. Phoebe Dale and Shahid Salman finished twenty-third after the gearbox trouble they faced during the rally. Daraius Shroff and Arjun Dheerendra completed the event in forty-eighth after their gearbox failure. Jeet Jhabakh and A G Somayya reached the classification in forty-ninth after the i20 driveshaft issue and restart.

Harkrishan Wadia and Kunal Kashyap finished seventh overall, while Ritesh Rai and Phalguna Raghavendra placed ninth. These results matter because they show the competitive layer beneath the podium. Coimbatore had a winner, though it also gave a wide group of teams clear information about pace, reliability and the work required before Round 3.