Dakshin Dare 2017: Samrat Yadav continues to lead while TVS Racing storm back

The 2017 Maruti-Suzuki Dakshin Dare Rally finished its second day of running in Chitradurga, some 197km from Bengaluru, as leg 2 concluded with surprise early leader Samrat Yadav continuing to lead the Ultimate Cars category. However, recovering from his two punctures, yesterday, Suresh Rana managed to climb up to second overall and now lies just under four minutes behind Yadav.

Sandeep Sharma is now third overall as Gaurav Chiripal dropped out of the podium positions.

The Ultimate Bikes class saw normal service resume as R Nataraj and Tanveer Abdul Wahid took over the top two positions for TVS Racing ahead of Sanjay Kumar.

Wahid has his work cut out to claim the lead, however. Wahid claimed that a faulty Trippy Track that got stuck as well as a malfunctioning GPS led to him taking a wrong turn yesterday. Even with the navigation errors, the candidate for a spot at next year's Dakar Rally was able to hold third place on account of thin competition in the two-wheel class.

No such errors cropped up today as he and Nataraj made their way to their front astride their RTR 450 FX bikes.

The rally continues tomorrow with a short stage before a long transport section takes the rally convoy to Belgaum.

ULTIMATE CARS (Top 3 after Leg 1B)
Samrat Yadav 4hr.54min.58sec.
Suresh Rana 4:58:13
Sandeep Sharma 4:59:50

ULTIMATE BIKES
R Nataraj 3hr.10min.41sec.
Tanveer Abdul Wahid 3:11:23
Sanjay Kumar 3:11:30