Gaurav Gill’s dream of capturing a Production World Rally Championship is over. At least for this year, anyway.
The 2007 Indian champion took over the TSI Racing Subaru Impreza from countryman Naren Kumar at the end of 2008. But a contractual dispute between TSI and his APRC team, MRF, has forced his withdrawal from further PWRC events this year.
Interviewed prior to Rally Whangarei, Gaurav was confident the issues surrounding his contract are merely a speed-bump, and not a road-block, for his international rally career. “PWRC was going well until we had some issues with my contract. I’ve been contracted with MRF, and the other team (Team Sidvin or TSI Racing Team) wanted to have my rights. They wanted all my rights to be owned by TSI Racing Team. But since I was already contracted to MRF we had this issue. So we’ve postponed the (PWRC) program until next year. So I think we’re going to resume next season.”
Even though his PWRC campaign has been postponed, Gaurav won’t be standing still. He’ll have another full season in the APRC, with the added challenge of developing a brand-new Mitisubishi EVO X, plus he has his sights set on a program in the USA.
“I’m just going to stick to the APRC this year, and a little bit of the US championship this year”, Gill said in Whangarei.
“The current scenario is that I have plan to run an 2006-model Subaru Impreza in the US Rally Championship, with Glenn Macneall co-driving for me. We haven’t finalised which rounds of Rally America we’ll contest, but it will be very soon. Hopefully in the next month or so”.
Along with his plans for Rally America, Gaurav will be back in Indian championship with his sights on another national title.
“I’ll also be getting back into my Indian Championship rally car, and do all the rounds of the Indian championship. We’ll be running a Mitsubishi Cedia, run by Team MRF. It’s a front-wheel drive, 220bhp engine, so it’s a good screamer. Even though it’s front-wheel drive, it teaches you a thing or two”‘
“It’s always good to have a lot of competition, and we’ve got a lot of Cedia’s coming into the Indian championship. Everyone’s trying to get budgets sorted and put money into their cars. Those cars are quite expensive to run, with excise duties and so on, but we’ve got it sorted. And with a lot of cars on the grid, it’s going to be good fun”.
“The Indian championship is a stepping-stone to the APRC, but we need to get four-wheel drive cars. We’ve got new regulations this year which allows four-wheel drive cars in the last two rounds, so that sounds really, really good. For sure, I’ll have one and I’m looking forward to getting into a four-wheel drive for the Indian championship”.
Photos courtesy of Marcel Stawiczny – MARSTA Photography and Linear Photographs.
