Desert Storm 2018: Mishra and Mare continue to lead Xtreme and Moto classes

The 2018 Maruti-Suzuki Desert Storm, organised by Northern Motorsport, will head into its fifth and final leg today with just a 24.06km special stage to be run today. 

Aabhishek Mihsra and Aaron Mare are the current leaders of the Xtreme (four-wheel) and Moto (two-wheel) classes, respectively, following the provisional results of the first half of yesterday’s fourth leg of the rally. 

The second half of the rally was being run in late afternoon for the Moto class and in the evening for the Xtreme class.  The results from those stages will be tallied with that of the final stage that's to be held today.

The fourth leg of the rally was divided into two runs of two stages measuring 93.44 and 69.61km. The competitors would run the stages in reverse direction in the second run. 

The bikes ran only the first part of special stage nine, allegedly on safety grounds, as running at night was too great a risk for motorcycle competitors. 

The first run (special stages 6 and 7) was classified as Leg 4A and was completed by all the participants following, which the Xtreme class saw all official entries by Maruti-Suzuki Motorsport withdraw from the event.

Dharampal Jangra had been the highest placed Maruti-Suzuki entrant until leg 3, but his Vitara-Brezza was forced to retire, as was Sandeep Sharma’s all-wheel-drive S-Cross. 

Jangra and Sharma will still be allowed to run the final leg and be included in the final classification but will have 160 to 200 hour penalty imposed on their final time as per Northern Motorsport officials. 

Samrat Yadav and Suresh Rana had been forced to withdraw within the 199km long special stage in Leg 3 itself. 

This leaves the current top three of the Xtreme class completely made up of privateers. Mishra and co-driver V Venu Rameshkumar, in his Grand Vitara, had a total time of 9hr. 20min. 24sec. 

Raj Singh Rathore, in his Isuzu D-Max V-Cross, was second overall, just over 30 minutes behind Mishra. Another 32 minutes behind Rathore is Niju Padia. 

SANTOLINO CHASING MARE

TVS Racing’s Lorenzo Santolino is trying to hunt down Ang’ata Racing’s Aaron Mare, but the Italian has admitted that due to the previous stage’s winner starting a stage and the rally being comprised mainly of one distinguishable track, it'll be difficult to catch him. 

Anga’ta Racing’s Sanjay Kumar was third overall, while TVS Racing’s Tanveer Abdul Wahid was forced to withdraw from the event due to problems with his RTR 450 FX.

Mare’s total time after the completion of special stages six, seven and part of eight was 7hr. 44min. 22sec. Santolino was another five minutes behind him while Kumar was almost 20 minutes adrift of Mare.