Suresh Rana and co-driver Ashwin Naik and Helmut Frauwallner won their ninth and second titles at the end of the 2013 Maruti Suzuki Raid de Himalaya in the Xtreme four wheel and two wheel categories, respectively in Leh, here today. Jagmeet Gill and co-driver Chandan Sen won the Adventure Trial category.
XTREME CARS AND TRUCKS
Rana and Naik piloted their Maruti-Suzuki Grand Vitara to a win after trailing Amanpreet Ahluwalia at the end of the first of six legs of the rally. Ahluwalia, however suffered a blown engine on the sixth and final leg when he was trailing Rana by 16 minutes at the end of the fifth leg. Rana finished the nearly 560 km of the competitive stages of the rally in a total time of 9hrs, 46:23mins.
Second to Rana was Sanjay Agarwal and co-driver Shivprakash E in a Grand Vitara XL-7. The pair trailed Team Thunderbolt's Harpreet Singh Bawa and Parminder Thakur.
Rana was pleased to add yet another Raid de Himalaya win to his career but bemoaned Mahindra withdrawing from the event after allegedly paying the entry fee.
"It would have been good if they (Mahindra) had competed," said Rana. "Sunny Sidhu is a terrific fighter and it is always great to compete against him.
Rounding out the top five was Karan Jung/Gurpreet Sawhney and Arminder Brar/Vijay Pal.
XTREME MOTORCYCLES AND QUADS
Austria's Helmut Frauwallner reclaimed the Raid de Himalaya title he held in 2011, which he had lost to Bangalore's C S Santosh last year.
Frauwallner's Yamaha WR 450 led the rally throughout the entire six legs. Santosh fell to ninth place at the end of the first leg due to electrical problems that affected his pace on the third special stage.
Santosh, however, decided to throw caution to the win on leg two and climbed seven places to slot himself nine places behind Frauwallner.
However, a blown mousse that destroyed his Suzuki's tyre ended his charge to defend his title at the beginning of the third leg.
The problem was traced to the mousse having to be installed in the bike's tyre manually instead of with a precision machine. The manual option had to be turned to because of Santosh's 2013 model Suzuki and its spares being caught up in Delhi customs. Santosh was forced to use his 2008 model bike and purchase whatever spares he could in Shimla itself before the rally started.
Frauwallner sympathised with Santosh's problems and admitted to wanting to compete against him. "Santosh is a terrific rider," said Frauwallner. "It's unfortunate what happened with him."
Frauwallner also admitted to Delhi customs being a problematic hurdle for the rally participants. "One can almost say that Delhi is the first special stage of this rally due to the customs!"
Second to Frauwallner was Stephan Rausch on board a Hauseberg FE 450 who was trailed by R Natrajan riding a TVS Apache. The top five was rounded out by Sourabh Handa and Umang Saxena on board KTM Duke 200 bikes.
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