Coffee Day Rally 2014 (earlier known as coffee 500) organised by the Motor sports club of Chikmagalur and this rally was the Last round of the Indian Rally Championship (IRC).
Kongettira Bopaiah, co-driven by Konganda Karumbaiah driving a Maruthi Esteem placed 1st in FMSCI 1600 cup class & 2nd in IRC1600 class beating more powerful cars like VW polo, Honda city & Maruthi Baleno’s.
The rally started on friday at the Amber Valley School where around 1000 people witnessed all the rally cars in action in the 2.6kms SSS (super special stage).
The rally proper began on saturday where the participants had to do 6 stages and 3 stages on sunday. the stages were based in three estates of Amalgamated Bean Company namely Chetnalli,Kumaragod & Chandrapura. Overnight rains had made the narrow estate roads veryslippery with lots of slushy patches which took out lots of cars The stages were very technical requiring precesion driving with no scope for error.
There was a total of 34 entries from all over india including top drivers like 2013 asia pacific rally champion Gaurav Gill, 2014 desert storm winner Sunny siddhu, Samir Thapar, Amithrajith Gosh,Vikram Mathais,Rahul Kantharaj etc.
Of the 34 participants only 18 managed to finish with Vikram Mathais driving a 280 bhp 4wheel drive Mitsubshi evo 9 specially brought in from Srilanka winning the overall title. The duo from coorg, also placed 2nd in the Fmsci cup class in K1000 rally held in bangalore (5th round of Irc).Of the 4 rallies the duo participated in this year (debut) they finished on the podium thrice.
