By IANS,
Mysore : Expectedly, Vikram Mathias and Amittrajit Ghosh delivered a 1-2 finish for Red Rooster Racing team on the concluding day of the Sidvin-Motorsport Association of India (MAI) Rally of Mysore here Sunday.
Both driving the Mitsubishi Cedia in the N+ class, had no opposition worth the name and the duo decided to safeguard their positions going into the third day rather than push.
At the finish, Mathias (co-driver PV Srinivas Murthy) had over five minutes to spare despite an errant fuel rail, while Ghosh (Ashwin Naik) lost quite a bit of time due to brake failure before it was set right at the first service break.
In fact, the N+ class was a bit of a let down in the absence of team MRF while Lohit Urs, the other entrant in this category, was in a 1600cc Maruti Baleno that was distinctly off pace compared to the 2000cc Cedias.
Mathias, who led by nearly two minutes overnight, opted to put in some useful miles in the Cedia as did Ghosh. Consequently, the pace was conspicuously slow much the disappointment of the huge turnout.
Meanwhile, Shailendra Hegde and co-driver Sheraz Ahmed won the title in the Rally Star Cup in style as he built on his overnight lead to emerge comfortable winners by 36 seconds over Shamarth Gowda and Prakhyat Shirole.
Deepak Paul Chinnappa (Srikarunya), who was lying second overnight in this class, went out of contention after wrecking his suspension following a tyre burst, about three km from the finish of Special Stage-10. Deepak drove a further four kilometres to the service on three tyres causing damage to the front suspension. Later, he went off road on a corner and the onlookers pulled the car back on road as he continued. In the process, he lost about five minutes.
The other two categories witnessed no contests with Sanjay Agarwal (Shiva Prakash), the former 1400cc champion driving a Gypsy after a 15-year break, comfortably won in his class as did Arjun Surya (Ravi Venkatesh) in the 1600cc category where he was the lone finisher.
The only major mishap of the day was when Satara’s family combination of Sanket Shanbhag who had his father Ramesh as the co-driver, toppled their Baleno into a dry canal when in sight of securing an overall third and also winning the 1600cc class. Neither suffered any injury.