Master of dirt
Mihir Dharkar wins the first season of Rock N Road 4x4 Masters, Shantanu Grover and Gurmeet Virdi grab 2nd and 3rd spot
ANEW ERA OF MOTORSPORT just began for Maruti Suzuki with the culmination of the first season of 4x4 Masters. After a bit of a hiatus from motorsports, India’s largest car manufacturer is back with a mega bang, and the irony is that the car of choice despite its diminutive proportions is the star not many knew we had.
Under the Rock N Road initiative, Maruti Suzuki wanted to take off-roading to the masses, with expeditions, weekend drives and an off-roading competition called 4x4 Masters. The latter is where the toughest of off-roaders competed to become the first-ever 4x4 Masters winner.
Over the past two and a half months, Maruti ran qualifiers in eight cities to find the best off-roader in the country, where participants would drive their own stock or modified Jimny and the best driver from each category would qualify for a grand final in Goa.
Two finalists were chosen from Delhi, Chandigarh, Shillong, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Vagamon, Pune and Goa to compete in the final, and the twist for the final was that they had to drive only stock Jimnys, both the manual and the automatic, over four special stages that to the untrained eye seemed almost impossible to conquer.
But the country’s 16 best off-roaders’ skill and determination shone through, and in the end, Mihir Dharkar won the first season of 4x4 Masters, edging out Shantanu Grover at the top step of the podium. Veteran offroader Gurmeet Virdi came in third place, battling an early DNF to come back from behind. While all 16 off-roaders showed exceptional skill, it was Dharkar’s speed, accuracy and guile that saw him cross the finish line with the best score. In addition to bragging rights for being the first-ever 4x4 Masters winner, he also gets an allexpenses-paid trip to Malaysia to witness RFC Malaysia from up close.