Vikram Mathias along with rookie co-driver Swaroop Mohan kept his wits about him to emerge the quickest man on a day when 11 competitors, notably National champion Gaurav Gill (Musa Sherif) packed up in the Coffee Day Rally, the sixth and concluding round of the Indian Rally Championship, here Saturday.
Disaster seemed to lurk around every corner of the Special Stages located in the nearby coffee estates as Gill retired when the steering column of his XUV 500 in the Team Mahindra Adventure livery gave away, and later, two Mitsubishi Evos of Samir Thapar (GS Mann) of JCT Rallying and PG Abhilash (Anoop Kumar) also retired due to mechanical problems.
The first Special Stage of the day was also the scene of a huge crash involving the Cedia of Karna Kadur (Sujith Kumar) who failed to negotiate a right-hander and slammed into a tree. Both walked out of the wreck unhurt, but for a few aches and pains.
In contrast, former National champion Mathias eschewed risk for caution in his Evo IX whose brakes seemed to play truant. However, he nursed the car quite brilliantly with conservative driving to finish in a time of one hour, 21 minutes, 33.8 seconds as he will go into Sunday's final loop of the Stages enjoying a lead of four minutes over his closest rival in the IRC class, Sunny Sidhu (PVS Murthy) of Team Mahindra Adventure.
"It is a bit scary as the car has virtually no brakes midway through the Stages and there are a few other issues with the Evo that need to be sorted out. I have to ease off quite a bit to keep the car on the road," said Mathias after the first of the two loops.
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Team Yokohama's Rahul Kanthraj (Vivek Bhatt), who has already sealed the championship in the IRC 2000 class, was the quickest in his category with a time of 01:26:55.7 driving the Mitsubishi Cedia while young Dean Mascarenhas (Shanmuga SN), in the VW Polo, put in another impressive show to top the IRC 1600 category and was the second quickest on the day.
Gill, who did not finish Friday's Super Special Stage due to a broken drive shaft, was quite disappointed after another misfortune Saturday, but said he will rejoin the Rally Sunday under the Super Rally format.
"Obviously, I am very disappointed. It was unfortunate that the steering column gave way and there was nothing we could do, but I will be rejoining the Rally on Sunday," said Gill.
Provisional Classification (Leg 1):
IRC: Vikram Mathias / Swaroop Mohan (Mitsubishi Evo IX) 1 (01hr, 21mins, 33.8secs); Sunny Sidhu / PVS Murthy (Mahindra Adventure, XUV 500) 2 (01:25:52.0); Arjun Rao Aroor / Satish Rajagopal 3 (VW Polo R2) 3 (01:26:24.1).
IRC 2000: Rahul Kanthraj / Vivek Bhatt (Team Yokohama, Cedia) 1 (01:26:55.7); Prithvi Dominic / Chandrashekar M (Cedia) 2 (01:27:13.4); Byram Godrej / Somaya AG (Slideways Industries, VW Polo) 3 (01:29:04.9).
IRC 1600: Dean Mascarenhas / Shanmuga SN (VW Polo) 1 (01:25:09.5); Chandan Gowda / Shahid Salman (VW Polo) 2 (01:31:23.5); Ritesh M Guttedar / Lokaranjan (VW Polo) 3 (01:43:45.7).
FMSCI 1600 Cup: Raghu Nandan B / Suraj K (Honda City V-Tec) 1 (01:29:28.3); Bopaiah KM / K Karumbaiah (Maruti Esteem) 2 (01:29:51.4); Lokesh Gowda / Ashika Menezes (Maruti Esteem) 3 (01:31:06.3).
