Sagar Muthappa, Sandeep Rao win Popular Rally, to open up the title race
Cochin, 28 October 2001: The 31-year Coorgi Sagar Muthappa and Sandeep Rao put their woes behind after three bad rallies and bounced with a win in Coorg last month, and added another back-to-back overall victory, comfortably clinching the 19th Chandrika Soap Popular Rally, the seventh round of the Indian National Rally Championship (INRC) here on Sunday.
With this victory, Sagar Muthappa and Sandeep Rao, kept themselves with a realistic chance of going for the title at the last round, the Coffee Day Rally, in Mangalore in December.
The rally consisted of 380km of total distance with nine Special Stages of two legs run on Saturday and Sunday. There were two physical stages, one of 15km at Boothathankettu and the other of 10km at Edamalayar, near Idukki district and these were run repeatedly as five stages on the first day and four stages on Sunday to make it a total of nine Special Stages making it about 115km of Stage-distance,
With a superb show on Saturday, the two Engineer friends based in Bangalore, Sagar and Sandeep, took a narrow lead of just 2 seconds but that was enough to keep reigning Asia Zone champion at bay and allowed them to fight on Sunday. But the champion in Naren, ably assisted by navigator Ramkumar, fought back taking the lead in the second stage on Sunday, but as fate would have it, he suffered clutch issues and lost a lot of time in the next stage. Sagar and Sandeep were steady and had an easy outing in the last stage to finish on top for their second successive victory. Last year’s winner hear, Arjun Balu and KR Kumar, fiished overall second and multiple former National champion, lost time in transport, and was content to be Overall third.
Biking legends Jagat Nanjappa and Anita, won the 1400cc Class with Vijayant Chowdhry and Musa Sherif taking the second place. With this win Jagat and Anita took the lead in the National Championship in this class replacing Vikram Mathias at the top.
Local star Dr Bikku Babu and co-driver Bonnie Thomas of Q-wait Oil clinched the Rally Star Cup for novices while Rahul Kantharaj and navigator Vivek Bhatt came second ahead of Manju K and co-driver K Prasad, who finished third.
Final Provisional Results:
Overall: 1. Sagar Muthappa/ Sandeep S Rao (Team MRF) Honda City (1hour, 26min, 24sec); 2. Arjun Balu/ KR Kumar (Team MRF) Honda City (1:28:44); 3. N Leelakrishnan/ Farooq Ahmed (Team MRF) Honda City (1:29:05); 4.Jagat Nanjappa/ Anita Nanjappa (Team MRF) Maruti Esteem (1: 31:16); 5. Vijayant Chaudhry/ Moosa Sherif (Team MRF) Maruti Esteem (1:33:44).
1400cc Class: 1. Jagat Nanjappa/ Anita Nanjappa (Team MRF) Maruti Esteem (1: 31:16); 2. Vijayant Chaudhry/ Moosa Sherif (Team MRF) Maruti Esteem (1:33:44); 3. George Anthony (1:35:43).
Rally Star Cup: 1. Bikku Babu /Bonnie Thomas (Q-wait Oil), Maruti Esteem (1:35:01); 2. Rahul Kantharaj/ Vivek Bhatt, Maruti Esteem, (1:38:21); 3. J Manju/ K Prasad, Maruti Esteem (1:38:21).
