Last year’s champions Ajgar Ali and Mohammed Musthafa successfully defended their title at the Biswa Bangla JK Tyre Himalayan Drive 6 in Darjeeling on Wednesday.
They beat the hot-in-pursuit Kolkata duo of Subir Roy and Nirav Mehta by a narrow five penalty points advantage to bring the rally to an exciting finish. The five-day event, India’s only Tri-Nation TSD (Time, Speed, Distance) rally, took 24 teams across Nepal, North Bengal and Bhutan over 1,615 tough kilometers before ending in Darjeeling.
The competition remained close right from day 1 with the defending champions picking up 54 penalty points, just eight penalty points less than the Subir-Nirav duo. In the next leg, Subir and Nirav performed slightly better by getting 54 penalty points, just two less that Ajgar and Musthafa.
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In the last leg, the difference in scores was even closer, with the Ajgar-Musthafa team picking up 20 penalty points, just one more than Subir and Nirav. Two legs of the rally — Leg 2 and 3 — in Nepal were cancelled due to technical problems arising out of rallying through different time zones. In the Open category too, the Aaj Tak team of Gagan Sethi and Dhiraj Arrora maintained their lead right from the first day and emerged champions with a cumulative score of 1,493 penalty points.
The team of Govind Dalmia and Anand Agarwala from Siliguri finished a distant second with a cumulative score of 5,849 penalty points. Pranjal More and Milindo Paul, also from Siliguri, finished in third position at the end of the rally with 7,006 penalty points. In the SUV category, Amit Dhanotia and Anuragh Agarwala emerged winners with 9,461 penalty points, while in the ‘Above 1300 cc category’, Pranai Rai and Nanki Kharki from Kalimpong took the title with 11,124 penalty points.
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