Naren-Ram conquer Old Anchor Rally de Goa
Goa, 9 Sept 2001: Defending champions VR Naren Kumar and co-driver D Ramkumar kept their overnight lead in tact and continued their good run to take the Overall honours in the Old Anchor Rally de Goa, the fifth leg of the Motorsports Association of India (MAI)’s Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) here on Sunday.
Ace Coimbatore duo, who were leading by 13 seconds ahead of teammates Sagar Muthappa and Sandeep S Rao on Saturday while another MRF outfit Karandip Singh and co-driver Jaidas Menon, who won the K-1000 rally in the previous round in Bangalore were trailing in the third place. However, on Sunday while Sagar Muthappa and Sandeep Rao retained their second place on the podium Leelakrishnan and Farooq Ahmed, who were trailing in the fifth place on Saturday, made up quite some time and finished a creditable third notching up valuable championship points and retained their lead in the National Championship with 41 points.
With Vikram Mathias and co-driver Sujith Kumar, who finished fourth today, running second on the National table with 32 points in the overall class, Leela and Farooq are well on their way to another National title with only three rallies remaining. Mathias and Sujith, however, were leading their class in the 1400cc Championship table with 58 points with husband-wife duo Jagat and Anita Nanjappa breathing down their neck with 51 points.
Favourites Leela and Farooq, to their shock, found that their rear shock-absorbers were mounted wrongly after a service break and that cost them time as they were penalised 20 seconds for two minutes Service Park delay on Saturday.
On Sunday, K1000 winners Karandip and Jaidas lost the front wheel of their Baleno and could not keep their Overall third position and slipped to fifth place in their class, the 1600cc. Another MRF outfit, Vijaynt Chowdhry with Musa Sherif as navigator pulled out after an off-road excursion with a suspension problem.
The Rally Star Cup was won by Jiby Maliakkal and navigator Rohan Rego who took a comfortable lead of over one minute against Ashish P Doshi and co-driver Bhavin Shah on Saturday itself. On Sunday, they increased the lead for a facile win which perched them on top of the leader board in the Rally Cup Championship standings with 59 points. The Mysore-Coorg combo of Lohith Urs and MK Bopanna who were running third in the class on Saturday retained their podium place after running three more stages on Sunday, with the last two conducted in the reverse direction.
The rally had a transport section of 70-km to Neturlim before the 30-km first Special Stage was run at Padi. The second Special Stage was a shorter one 12.5km long and was run between Padi and Barcem. After a service break, the same stage was run as SS3. The parc ferme was at the Old Anchor Resort, the sponsor.
Provisional Results:
Overall: 1. VR Naren Kumar/ D Ramkumar (Team MRF) (1hour, 13minutes, 08seconds); 2. Sagar Muthappa/ Sandeep S Rao (Team MRF) (1:14:07); 3. N Leelakrishnan/ Farooq Ahmed (Team MRF) (1:16:04); 4. Vikram Mathias/ BS Sujith Kumar (Team MRF) (1:16:47); 5. Arjun Balu/ K Ramaswamy Kumar (Team MRF) (1:17:13).
1401 to 1600cc Class: 1. VR Naren Kumar/ D Ramkumar (Team MRF) (1:13:08); 2. Sagar Muthappa/ Sandeep S Rao (Team MRF) (1:14:07); 3. N Leelakrishnan/ Farooq Ahmed (Team MRF) (1:16:04); 4. Arjun Balu/ K Ramaswamy Kumar (Team MRF) (1:17:13); 5. Karandip Singh/ Jaidas Menon (Team MRF) (1:22:23).
801 to 1400cc Class: 1. Vikram Mathias/ BS Sujith Kumar (Team MRF) (1:16:47); 2. Jagat Nanjappa/ Anita Nanjappa (Team MRF) (1:17:34); 3. Philippos Matthai/ Sudarshan Gowda (1:21:51).
Rally Star Cup: 1. Jiby Maliakkal/ Rohan Rego (1:22:49); 2. Ashish P Doshi/ Bhavin J Shah (1:25:06); 3. Lohith V Urs/ MK Bopanna (1:26:26); 4. JM Manju/ K Prasad (1:28:14); 5. NK Ramesh/ Ashok Ponnappa (1:29:55); 6. Zubin P Nariman and Mazdyar Vatcha (1:31:06); 7. Thirtha S Patil/ Amit Anand (1:31:11).
