Delhi’s Gaurav Gill (Musa Sherif) further strengthened his position at the top with a smooth and steady show on the four tricky stages of leg 3 in the Maruti Suzuki Dakshin Dare 18 here on Wednesday.
A WRC driver as he is, Gill played it smart all along even as the men from the Maruti Suzuki team battled hard while posting some of the fastest times for the day. The idea was to shuffle the next two slots at stake, firmly held by Mahindra Adventure’s Philippos Mathai (PVS Murthy) and Amittrajit Ghosh (Ashwin Naik).
But what came as a big surprise was that defending champion Suresh Rana (Chirag Thakur) has sort of given up on the crown. “He has put up a good lead and there’s no point pushing hard. We as a team are looking at only the third and fourth slots” said Rana.
Reduced speed
With a solid lead in his bag, Gill could afford to cut down on some speed as he had a clear eye on nursing his car.
“It was really very rough for me, it was all about holding the fort and thinking about my team, the engineers and everybody who have had taken efforts for this. They’ve made some big sacrifices to be here so we felt it’s important to ease a bit.” said Gill.
Obviously that brought down on his time and he was the third fastest for the day. “It does not matter much.” said Gill.
Flat tyre problem
Meanwhile, Mathai continued with his good run for most part but a flat tyre in the final stage cost him close to two minutes but, he carried on to complete the job for his team.
But his team-mate Ghosh suffered yet another jolt in the form of a flat tyre for the third consecutive day. He lost quite a bit on time and Team Maruti Suzuki’s Sandeep Sharma (Anmol Rampal) looked good to cross over the line third.
“Since they have a comfortable lead they can afford to relax a bit but we need to go hard as much as we can do,” said Sandeep.
“We never expected to have three punctures in three days and that’s costing us our third position as well. We are over a minute behind Sandeep but the game is still not over because it’s a cross country rally. Also, tomorrow we will be on tarmac and I am sure we will come back harder,” said Naik.