Reigning champion in two-wheeler extreme category, C S Santosh crashed out of Raid-de-Himalaya as the eventful third leg of the rally concluded here today.
However, there was no such surprise element in the four wheeler extreme category as Suresh Rana retained his lead at the top, clocking 5 hours 16 minutes and 14 seconds in the third leg.
Last year's best performer in the adventure category Satish Savera, also bowed out of the event.
A dramatic turn of events saw Santosh crash out due to the "technical failure in his bike".
Santosh was on his 450 cc Honda CR and had managed to stay at the second place after initial two legs of the rally.
However, Helmut Frauwallner of Austria maintained the pole position with a timing of 5 hours 5 minutes and 37 seconds.
Kaza leg saw a drop in numbers of vehicles in Extreme as well as Adventure category. 75 vehicles had started from Shimla but now only 45 remained and in Adventure category out of 62, 47 have been able to last through this rough terrain.
Third leg of the annual rally started from Kaza and headed towards Demul Jn, Lingti and reached Shichling. From Shichling, rally then returned to Kaza.
This leg covered precisely 94.28 kilometres.
