The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : Vikram and Sujith in lead

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 29, 2005

Sport

Sport - Racing : Motor

Vikram and Sujith in lead

Special Correspondent

MYSORE: The great rallying rivalry between the two tyre giants is on again. At the end of the first day in the K&N Mysore Safari JK Tyres' new recruit Vikram Mathias and his co-driver Sujith Kumar established a 36 second lead over Team MRF's new team of Lohit M. Urs and Moosa Sharif.

Former national rally champion Naren Kumar set the pace initially but in the Hosapura Special Stage, the Coimbatore based driver who has also just signed up with JK Tyres collided with a cow on the track.

Naren's Baleno was badly damaged forcing him to drop out of the rally from a leading position.

However last year's INRC champions Vikram and Sujith carried the day for JK Tyres and ended the first day in the lead.

Team MRF has a strong field of four cars behind the leaders and with the super special stages to be held on Sunday would be making a concerted effort to topple the first day's leaders.

The rally was badly hit with unmanned sections and stray cows often ended up on the special stages. There were two other drop- outs from the event with Sajjad Hussain and Ranjit Ballal ending up on the DNF list.

In the 1400 cc section an exciting finish is on the cards with Prithveen Rajan (co-driver Murthy) leading the experienced Sanjay Aggarwal by 11 seconds.

The results:

Overall Section: Vikram Mathias / Sujith Kumar (Baleno) JK Tyres 52.12; Lohit M Urs / Moosa Sharif (Baleno) Team MRF 52.48; Arjun Balu / Kumar Ramaswamy (Baleno) Team MRF 52.58; Aroor Arjun Rao / Satish Kumar (Baleno) Team MRF 53.37; Karandip Singh / Jaidas Menon (Baleno) Team MRF 53.56; Jiby Malaikkal / Nikhil Pai (Honda City) 55.41.

1400 CC: Prithveen Rajan / Murthy; Sanjay Aggarwal / Kumar; Mathai / Naik.

Rally Star Cup: Chetan Shivram / C.K. Chinappa; G. Joshi / Srikaanth; Jasbir Singh / Jeetender Nath.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport