TSI Racing Crashed Out of Rally del Paraguay: Another Indian Crew Just Finished 4th in the Same WRC3 Class

Dean Mascarenhas and Naveen Puligilla are running India’s only two international rally programmes on sponsor money, and this weekend showed exactly how far apart their results can be.

Two Ford Fiesta Rally3 cars carrying Indian crews lined up at Rally del Paraguay this past weekend, and by Sunday one had finished fourth in the WRC3 class while the other lay parked on the side of special stage 20 with accident damage. Same weekend, same class, same car. That split is close to an honest snapshot of where Indian rallying stands three seasons into its return to the World Rally Championship: real talent, a genuine podium already on the board, and almost none of it paid for by a car manufacturer.

What Actually Happened in Paraguay

Rally del Paraguay ran August 27-30 out of Encarnacion, 357.64km across 22 stages on soft red-clay gravel, round 11 of the 2026 WRC, WRC2 and WRC3 championships. Sami Pajari and Marko Salminen won outright in a Toyota GR Yaris Rally1.

Dean Mascarenhas and co-driver Gagan Karumbaiah of TSI Racing, driving car #53 in a Fiesta Rally3 built by PH Sport, retired after stage 20. Motorsport.com’s results tracking lists the cause as an accident; neither the team nor the drivers had issued a public statement at the time of writing, so treat that as what the timing system recorded, not a confirmed account of how it happened.

Naveen Puligilla and co-driver Musa Sherif of Duran Racing, in a Fiesta Rally3 prepared by MRU Motorsport, finished fourth in WRC3. It came weeks after they won the ARC3 class outright at the Rwanda Mountain Gorilla Rally.

Two Privateer Teams, Not One National Programme

It is easy to read “India in the WRC” as a single storyline. It is not. These are two separate, privately funded efforts that happen to share a car and a class.

TSI Racing was the first Indian outfit to enter the WRC, back in 2008, and returned this year after an 18-year gap. Mascarenhas and Karumbaiah are the reigning 2025 INRC champions, and TSI is skipping the 2026 INRC season entirely, per Autocar India, to fund the WRC3 campaign instead.

Duran Racing is a separate outfit with its own sponsor list. Puligilla is the 2025 INRC champion in the 3T class, and Sherif is a veteran co-driver with multiple INRC titles behind him. In November 2025 the pair finished second in WRC3 at Rally Saudi Arabia, the first podium by an all-Indian crew in any FIA World Rally Championship category.

The Season So Far, Side by Side

Neither crew has run a full season in one championship. Both switch between WRC, ERC and ARC rounds depending on where sponsor money and a workable calendar line up that month.

Who Is Actually Paying for This

Neither team gets Ford factory support. Both cars are customer Fiesta Rally3s run through independent European prep shops, standard for Rally3 worldwide, but worth stating plainly: there is no Indian car manufacturer’s money in either programme.

Compare that to how Maruti Suzuki and MRF backed Gaurav Gill’s APRC-winning years, or how TVS Racing funds its INRC and INMRC teams on a multi-year factory budget. Both crews flying India’s flag in WRC3 right now are funded round to round by energy, education and business-services sponsors, not by a carmaker.

That has consequences. It is why the calendar for both crews is picked by cost rather than one championship table, and why TSI Racing gave up its home INRC season to afford this campaign instead of running both. A crash like Paraguay costs a privateer real money to fix before the next round, in a way it would not for a factory team with spares on-site.

What Happens Next

Neither team has confirmed its next event publicly yet. The INRC’s next round is Coorg in September, which Puligilla and Sherif could enter since they are still racing domestically; TSI Racing, having sat out the INRC this year, will not be there.

For a sport with this little manufacturer backing in India, the better marker than any single result is whether both programmes still have budget for a start line next season. One Indian crew has a bent Fiesta Rally3 and a season best of seventh. The other has a fourth place, a class win in Rwanda, and the only WRC podium an Indian crew has ever scored. Both are true at once.

For more on the pipeline behind drivers like these, see our look at the domestic racing ladder behind Kush Maini and Narain Karthikeyan, and Hero MotoSports’ bet on an 18-year-old to build India’s first Dakar champion, another privateer-adjacent wager on unproven international talent.

One Indian crew crashed out of Paraguay. Another finished fourth and holds the only WRC podium India has ever scored. Both are privateers spending sponsor money one rally at a time, and that is the real state of Indian rallying in 2026.

What is WRC3 and Rally3?

Rally3 is the FIA’s entry tier of purpose-built rally car above the smaller Rally4 class. WRC3 is the support championship run for these cars at select World Rally Championship weekends, where drivers without factory backing prove themselves before stepping up to pricier Rally2 machinery in WRC2.

Has an Indian driver ever finished on a WRC podium?

Yes, for the first time. Naveen Puligilla and Musa Sherif finished second in WRC3 at Rally Saudi Arabia in November 2025, the first podium by an all-Indian driver and co-driver pairing in any World Rally Championship category.

Is TSI Racing competing in the Indian National Rally Championship in 2026?

No. TSI Racing skipped the 2026 INRC season to put its budget behind Dean Mascarenhas and Gagan Karumbaiah’s international WRC3 and ERC Rally3 programme instead, per Autocar India’s reporting on the team’s return to the WRC.