Sunny Sidhu, Adrian Metge, and Ankur Chauhan lead after day 1 of competitive stages at Desert Storm 2019

After a hefty transport stage from New Delhi to Bikaner on previous day, Rally Desert Storm 2019 saw an eventful day on Wednesday with top contenders closely following each other in an intense neck-to-neck battle running till late in night. At the time of announcement of partial provisional results for Leg 1, Adrian Metge of TVS Racing was at the numero uno position in the Moto Category with a total time (SS 1 & 2) of 1 hour 5 minutes 3 seconds. In the Xtreme category, veteran rally driver Sunny Sidhu (Co-driver Ashwin Naik) was at the top of the leader board with total timings (SS 1 - 3) of 2 hours 5 minutes 53 seconds. 

The day saw participants in the Moto, Xtreme, and Ndure categories suffering immensely from the soaring temperature, with several participants & vehicles struggling to perform their best. In Moto Category, France’s Metge was closely followed by India’s CS Santosh, who is representing Hero Motorsports Team Rally, with timings of 1 hour 7 minutes 23 seconds. TVS Racing’s Abdul Wahid Tanveer clocked just behind Santosh at 1 hours 10 minutes 11 seconds.

Aishwarya Pissay from Team TVS Racing described the day as, “This year with the heat being quite extreme, the first day was still a quite wonderful & challenging. Stage 1 was a little more challenging then stage 2 but both of them were really fast. I had a couple of falls but it was all fun and no major injury. I look forward to attacking one day at a time; day 1 is done –day 2 is next!” Aishwarya stood at an overall 23rd place in provisional results of Leg 1.

In Xtreme Category, Sidhu was tailed on the leaderboard by reigning champion Abhishek Mishra (co-driver Srikanth Gowda) from Team Sparky’s Garage with total time of 2 hours 15 minutes 35 seconds and by Samrat Yadav (co-driver Kunal Kashyap) with timings of 2 hours 16 minutes 3 seconds at the second and third positions respectively. Gaurav Gill (co-driver Musa Sherif) stood on the fourth position with cumulative Leg 1 timings of 2 hours 16 minutes 35 seconds. 

It is notable that 8 participants in Moto category and 4 participants in the Xtreme categories had to retire out of the race in leg 1. While all of them looked determined to finish the stages, the scorching heat got the better of them. Among the competitors who didn’t make it through after the end of Day 1 include Imran Pasha (TVS Racing), Sarath Shenoy, Renuka M from Moto Category and Phillipos Mathai (co-driver PVS Moorthy) of Team Mahindra Adventure, Sanjay Agarwal (co-driver Smitha N) from Xtreme category. Although they still have a chance to take restart from next leg, it will be difficult for these contenders to make up for the time lost to premature retirement on Day 1. 

Endurance Category saw Ankur Chauhan (Co-Driver Prakash M) top the charts with a cumulative Leg Penalty of just 13 minutes 38 seconds after 8 sections of regularity rallying. He was followed by Deepak Sachdeva (co-driver Japjyot Singh Dhingra) with leg penalty of 31 minutes 30 sectors and Capt Abhilash Singh (co-driver Aashish Agarwal) with cumulative leg penalty of 31 minutes 34 seconds at the second and third position respectively. 

SS 1 started from Noorsar village in Bikaner districted and traveled a distance of 41 KM. The stage claimed a victim in Xtreme category contender Sanjay Agarwal’s (co-Driver Smith N) Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara which went up in massive flames due to heating & electrical issues. SS 2 took off from Rajasar village and traveled a distance of 46 Km before the finish line. Both Moto and Xtreme categories had to undergo SS 1 & 2. SS 3 Night stage (exclusively for Xtreme category) started from Kelan village, also in Bikaner district, and traveled 41 Km. SS 3 proved out to be a navigational nightmare for most of the competitors due to the exertion from previous stages & lack of light.

After another remaining stage in Bikaner, the competition will travel to the golden frontier of Jaisalmer for remaining set of special stages. With some spectacular fight in the top order and numerous retirements on the day 1 itself – Rally Desert Storm 2019 seems to be taking an interesting turn.