Аce Indian rally driver Gaurav Gill displayed remarkable skills on dirt tracks and dished out excellent performance in his Greece. Gill after his memorable outing in Finland and Kenya had another fantastic drive in the rugged gravel stages of the Acropolis Rally which covering a total distance of 1192kms included 16 Special stages of 303 kms, before concluding on September 11.
The weekend was the ultimate test of man and machine and JK Tyre's Gaurav Gill showed immense grit and pushed his car to extremes in the baking heat of Athens. Blinding dust trails with almost negligible visibility, bent lower-arms, completely worn out tyres made the drive even more challenging and dangerous for the Arjuna Awardee but he kept his pace in all the stages.
On Saturday after Stage 8, Gill was placed 9th in his WRC2 class with a difference of 30.8 sec from the leader Andreas Mikkelsen.
Gill who is a master of gravel and manoeuvring tough terrains, worked up his paces and upgraded himself through the remaining stages of the event. In the penultimate stage, Gill gave a tough fight to his fellow drivers and outpaced season leader Mikkelsen and seasoned WRC2 campaigner from Czech Martin Prokop.
Prokop was approximately eight seconds behind Gill in Stage 15. Gill was just 7.49 minutes off from the WRC2 leader E Lindholm across Special Stages of 303 kms out of total distance of 1192kms and concluded his campaign at 1.5 sec per km off the pace from the factory team driver. It indeed was a celebratory moment for Gill as he left the championship frontrunner Mikkelsen four seconds behind in the final stage of the rally. Clocking some of his best times, compared to seasoned WRC top category, he was just 3 seconds off per km to far superior cars of overall WRC leader T Neuville, who is Hyundai Works team driver.
This story is from the September - October 2022 edition of Auto Track.
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This story is from the September - October 2022 edition of Auto Track.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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