Veteran Jagat Nanjappa and Youngster Chetan Changappa are RFC India 2018 Champs.
Veteran rallyist Jagat Nanjappa and youngster co-driver Chetan Changappa representing Team V5 Off-roaders from Coorg won the ISUZU Rain Forest Challenge India 2018. While Chetan set an example and standard for the fitness level and planning capability of a spotter.
The duo achieved the much deserved victory after "Two years of so near yet so far". He earlier missed this honour twice, but he started as the favourite and lived up to the expectation. After running second till the day two. He climbed up to the numero uno spot on the leader board on day three. There on the team never looked back. Steadily they kept on increasing their lead day by day, by the end of day five he was way ahead with 124 points on the defending champion Gurmeet Virdi and Kirpal Singh Tung from Gerrari Off-roaders, Chandigarh. Two Malaysians Mervyn Lym and Alex Tan from Team Fairmont, Mumbai were running third.
Day six, had 400 points on stake, with 100 each on four stages. Gurmeet with a DNF due to winch issues slided further down and Merwyn started the day with over 200 points difference, had no option to aim for the top slot. The Pair of Jagat Nanjappa and co-driver Chetan Changappa planned the day well and ensured they cleared all the stages fruitfully, which paid off. the pair with a lead of over 186 points were the clear winners. Merwyn with a total of 1764 points was behind in second. Gurmeet had slipped to third. So the decks were cleared for the Pair from Coorg in Karnataka to be crowned as the winners of 5th Edition of RFC India.
The Single stage on the final day at the IT Park was a stage for the locals to have the glimpse of the final stage of 5th edition. The Winning pair of Jagat Nanjappa and Chetan Changappa just had to show their presence in this stage, they finished with a total of 2006 points. Mervyn Lym and Alex Tan with 1849 points stood second. The pair of defending champions Gurmeet Virdi and Kirpal Singh Tung with 1800 point finished third. After leading for the first two days the pair of Sanbir Singh Dhaliwal and Gurpartap Singh Sandhu from Chandigarh with 1742 points settled for fourth. Dr. Chaitanya Challa and Shabarish Jagarapu from Hyderabad came in fifth. The first timers in RFC Chow Ujjal Namshum and Ingpeng Mein from Arunachal Pradesh were Sixth. Localites from Goa Tejas Prakash Shindolkar Yogesh Prakash Nadkarni finished seventh.
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