Desert Storm: Mishra passes Rana for lead, Santosh holds Moto top spot
Aabhishek Mishra jet past Suresh Rana in Leg 2 to take the lead in the Xtreme category of Maruti Suzuki Desert Storm, while Hero’s CS Santosh continues his stranglehold in the Moto class.
#49 Hero MotoSports Team Rally: CS Santosh
Hero MotoSports Team Rally
Mishra, along with co-driver V Venu Rameshkumar, completed SS3 in 1hr27m20s and took another 48m13s to finish the shorter SS4.
Mishra’s rapid times allowed him to leapfrog 10-time Raid de Himalaya winner Suresh Rana and move atop the Xtreme standings.
Rana, who drives a factory-prepared Grand Vitara and is assisted by co-driver PV Srinivas Murthy, lost over a minute in SS3 and was marginally slower in SS4, ending 38s behind Mishra in the combined order.
Like Mishra, Raj Singh Rathore (co-driver Sagar Mallapa) also made gains on the second day of the cross-country rally, demoting Gaurav Chiripal (co-driver Srikanth Gowda) down to fourth place.
Samrat Yadav (co-driver Syed Najeeb Nizami), who was added into Maruti Suzuki’s factory line-up from last year’s Raid de Himalaya, completed the top-five.
Santosh holds diminished Moto lead
After building a mammoth six-minute advantage on Day 1 alone, Santosh took it steady in the second leg, ending the leg third fastest.
However, he continues to lead the Moto category, albeit by a diminished margin of 2m14s from Angata Racing’s Aaron Mare.
Mare’s teammate Sanjay Kumar trails nearly 16 minutes behind in third position, while TVS Racing’s Santolino Lorenzo made rapid progress to propel himself to fourth.
Be part of Motorsport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments