Dakshin Dare serves as a Raid warm-up

The Maruti-Suzuki Dakshin Dare Rally has a lower profile than the Desert Storm and Raid de Himalaya, but still served up intrigue.

The Maruti-Suzuki Dakshin Dare is usually at an inherent disadvantage as compared to the two big cross-country rally events in India; the Desert Storm and Raid de Himalaya. Owing to how close it finishes to early October (when the Raid is held), it usually doesn’t attract a full-strength field of competitors due to which there is not much media attention. The event was also the scene of some unwelcome muscle felxing by Maruti-Suzuki in 2014 in the wake of Mahindra’s Desert Storm win. While it is disappointing to see the car category reduced to essentially an all-Maruti field, like any cross-country event, it has its own story to tell.

This time it started with the event being held a month earlier than it was last year and finishing in Maharashtra for the first time. Twenty-two hundred kilometers – mostly comprising of transport stages – were laid out from the starting point in Bengaluru to Pune, where the rally would conclude after a week. 

With a total competitive distance equaling that of a WRC rally (except that is normally held over two and a half days) and terrain that would not have been out of place at a rally weekend, it did feel like I was covering a very long INRC event from a decade ago. One of the stages used in the Dakshin Dare was also part of the K1000 rally. 

By the time the rally came to a close, however, I wondered if I was at the Rain Forest Challenge. As the hills and windfarms gave way to the lush green ghats of Maharashtra, the weather took a turn for the wet as well. Cloudbursts lead to heavy and intermittent rain on the final two days and the wind made it impossible to stay completely dry.

Of course, I put my own difficulties of maintaining dry feet and a dry camera aside when I saw the competitors – especially the riders – brave those conditions. The penultimate day, in particular, saw participants having to tackle visibility that swung wildly from clear to obscured – on account of the rain – as they negotiated a very narrow pathway with a sliding drop on either side. 

Rising Star

By that point of the rally, the latest name in contemporary cross-country rally – Suresh Rana, Sunny Sidhu, Gaurav Chiripal, Sandeep Sharma, Harpreet Bawa being some of the established ones – was showing why he could eventually add his name as a winner.

Trailing Rana’s Grand Vitara by just 38 seconds before the final leg, Samrat Yadav finished second to the veteran after the front axle on his Gypsy broke, ending his bid for a win. He finished ahead of the factory Gypsy of Sharma, however. 

Yadav’s speed has never been in doubt and within cross-country rallying circles he has been tipped as a future star. However, he has known to be rash with his driving too. At the 2015 Raid de Himalaya, Yadav’s Gypsy dropped down a 150 foot gorge and was propped up by a tree. The crash led to a fractured skull but both he and his navigator were not fatally injured. 

Even at this year’s Dakshin Dare, he was holding the lead of the rally before nearly toppling in leg three. His Gypsy would have retired from the event had it not been for people present at the scene who helped push his car out of a ditch and get back on track. 

One hopes Yadav learns from this as such a mistake at the Raid – the final cross-country rally of the year – is likely to be punished a lot more severely. 

Errors by frontrunners also allowed for a brief shake up in the two-wheel class where Sanjay Kumar managed to lead the mighty TVS Racing duo of R Nataraj and Tanveer Abdul Wahid. Wahid in particular was left with a lot of ground to make up after going the wrong way at a fork in the road due to the bunting tape not being set up. 

Eventually, however, both Nataraj and Wahid surged past Kumar a lot easier than Rana got past Yadav to enforce the traditional status quo in both the two and four wheel classes. 

Roads outside the city of Chitradurga was the scene of the first running of competitive stages of the ninth edition of the event. Car class saw early problems for Sanjay Aggarwal whose right-rear tyre and wheel got ripped off his Grand Vitara as he pushed in order to make up for the disappointment of not winning the Desert Storm earlier this year. Philipos Matthai also crashed out early while Rana suffered a puncture in two of the three special stages of the day.

A 45.09km stage was run three times in order to make up the day’s tally of competitive running.

The fast stages that were strewn with loose rocks made the going tricky for both two and four wheelers. This served to reinforce the overall feeling of the rally being an extended INRC event. 

That ultimately made one wonder if there was more to the rumors of Maruti taking part in the INRC itself as a factory team than just rumors alone. Before one thinks about that, however, there is the matter of whether Rana will be driving a modified S-Cross in the Raid.

His co-driver Ashwin Naik confirmed that work is underway to do so as Maruti themselves have finally realized the marketing potential of running with and winning in a vehicle that is currently on sale. Isuzu has realized this already even though it is not officially a factory participant but rather just lending some support to those willing to run a D-Max V-Cross.

All eyes are once again trained to the Raid de Himalaya and the hope of Raj Singh Rathore putting up a strong showing behind the wheel of the Isuzu with which he almost won the India Baja. On the twisty sections of the Raid’s route his heavier car is likely to be a disadvantage but there are also enough high-speed sections where Rathore can make up time. 

Testing is taking up a lot of his time, hence the reason he was not present at the Dakshin Dare despite three Isuzus being entered. 

As far as the riders are concerned, little is expected to stand in the way of TVS Racing, whose ace riders only real cause of grief was the rain encountered on the last two days. The RTR 450 FXs of Nataraj and Wahid offer big power and torque at even the slightest twist of the throttle. After seeing them kick up dirt with abandon over the first three legs, the shift of seeing the two, as well as Kumar, tip-toe through the stages made for great spectating. However, the riders were unlikely to be thinking about anything except just making it through the stage and to a dry room with no amount of coaxing getting them out to a stage again.

At least not until they get to the Himalayas and look to finish off the cross-country rally season on a high note and in one piece as well.