Round 1 of the Indian national rally championship (INRC) and Indian rally championship (IRC) will be flagged off on July 23 in Coimbatore, the organisers announced on Friday.
While Round 1 of the INRC-IRC will kickstart in Coimbatore, it will end with the national finals of the Indian national TSD rally championship (INTSDRC) in December.
The INRC-IRC 2016 will also see the introduction of the Shakedown, which will be a pre-event procedure conducted to provide some pre-rally practice and testing to all the competitors.
Top seeded drivers like Gaurav Gill, Amittrajit Ghosh, Sunny Sidhu, Arjun Rao Aroor, Rahul Kanthraj, Karna Kadur and others will all be back in action in this year's edition and will also drive celebrities and media representatives as passengers for two or three kms. of the shakedown stage in their rally cars.
"Rallying has suffered from a lack of full fledged support from sponsors and promoters for a few years and now I think I can safely say that it seems behind us. Rallying equates with probably the purest form of motorsport and a layman identifies with the vehicles competing," Zayn Khan, president of Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India (FMSCI) said.
--IANS
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