Aabhishek Mishra and Adrien Metge continue their domination
in the Xtreme and Moto categories; CS Santosh won the stage today
The penultimate day of the Desert Storm saw some shuffle in
the results. It was a 190km marathon stage and it was the longest stage of the rally. This stage put the navigational skills of the competitors and caught them unawares. Team
Sparky's Garage Aabhishek Mishra (co-driver Srikanth Gowda) in their rally
prepped Maruti Suzuki Vitara blitzed the stage today with a time of just 02:49:49.
Close behind their heels, in second position is Samrat Yadav
(co-driver Kunal Kashyap) in second position in their Toyota Fortuner with a
time of 3:00:44 to complete today’s morning stage. Capt AVS Gill (Diwakar Kalia)
also from Team Sparky Garage was in good form and he jumped from fourth to
third place after today’s stage, completing today’s stage in 03:03:01.
It was tough for Mahindra
Racing’s Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif), as he crashed into a barbed
fence; he suffered mechanical issues and drove again. But he had lost precious
time – he took a little over four hours to complete the stage (4:09:26). At the
end of the stage as of today, he has dropped to eighth position. Lhapka Tsering
(co-driver Venu Rameshkumar) driving their Polaris ATV jumped two places to P4
from P6 yesterday.
In the Moto category, Hero MotoSports’ CS Santosh won the
SS6 with a time of 02:44:30, with Sherco TVS rider Adrien Metge two minutes
behind him. Not all was easy, as Santosh ran a loop twice and went 10km in the
wrong direction. Despite this setback, he won the penultimate stage according
to the partial provisional results. “This year I stayed on the bike and avoided
the big crashes I had the last years. Last day tomorrow so I’m looking forward
to finish and bring this home!” Santosh is second overall as of now.
However, Adrien is first overall as of now, with a total time
of 5:16:49. He also found the navigation quite complex and the scorching heat was not helping either. Maintaining his third position is TVS Racing’s AW Tanveer, who
finished SS6 in 2:45:56 minutes. Teammate Aishwarya Pissay did not start the
stage due to technical issues and will restart the stage tomorrow again. R
Natraj and Rajendra RE from TVS Racing are in P4 and P5 respectively.
All results mentioned are provisional.
All results mentioned are provisional.
Adding more drama, another
eight riders in the Moto and four drivers in the Xtreme category dropped out of contention
due to the extreme conditions. The Desert Storm finishes tomorrow and competitors in the Xtreme and Moto category have to cover 160km and 80km respectively.
Images by Northern Motorsport and TVS Racing
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