JK Tyres duo hoping to finish among top three

Chennai, Apr 5 (UNI) Team Rally India, consisting of national champions Naren Kumar and Ram Kumar, will compete in the Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC), which will be flagged off with the Rallye de Nouvelle, New Caledonia from April 13 to 15.

Announcing the decision of their participation in the prestigious rally, Vicky Chandhok of FMSCI said the two would be hoping to compete in all the legs of the rally.

The six-time national champion Naren Kumar and his co-driver Ram Kumar, supported by JK Tyres, will drive a Mitsubhishi EVO 9 with the Reece Jones Motorsports, a Group N team based in New Zealand.

Former national champion, N Leelakrishnan will be the tuner for the team.

Naren and Ram have completed a training session with the team in New Zealand. They said their objective was to finish among the top three this season.

We are participating after a gap of four years. We have been the national champions (INRC) since 1999 and the Asian Zone champions in 2001. We have been aspiring to compete in APRC since then. This is the right opportunity for us'', Naren Kumar, who had taken part in the APRC in 2002 but did not achieve any results due to mechanical problems, said.

Naren also revealed that the team will not take part in the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) this season. The team is co-sponsored by Star Health and Allied Insurance and Sidvin.

Team MRF had already announced their teams for the APRC, which will have in fray another Indian driver Gaurav Gill driving for Team MRF.

The FIA Asia Pacific Rally championship events for the 2007 season: are as follows: Rallye de Nouvelle, Caledonia (April 13-15), Hella International Rally of Whangarei (May 11-13), Rally of Canberra (June 1-3), Rally Hokkaido (July 6-8), Malaysian Rally (August 10-12), Gudang Garam International Rally Indonesia (September 7-9), China Rally (November 11-13).

UNI