Day
3 of the Maruti Suzuki Dakshin Dare 2014 started from the Vidyanagar township
and moved ahead to the Canal stage. Situated right next to the brimming
Tungabhadra canal the flat track featured many ditches and patches of slush,
which created several super charged moments with high speed jumps and skids.
All this when the weather became warm after a short drizzle.
The Extreme Car category drivers travelled a
total distance of 100 kms during the day, with all the Maruti Gypsy vehicles ruling
the roost on day three. Team Maruti’s Sandeep Sharma and Varun Davessar in
their Maruti Gypsy continued their leading position as they maintained the
lead, clocking a total time of 1:57:19. In the second spot were Team Maruti
drivers Sanjay Agarwal and Venu Ramesh Kumar closing at 1:58:52 in their Maruti
Gypsy. Nine time Raid de Himalaya champion Suresh Rana and Parminder Thakur
scorched the track in their Maruti Gypsy, to better their position from Day 2,
finally finishing third by end of day 3 with a time of 1:59:23.
Last year’s Dakshin Dare winner and leader of
day one, Amanpreet Ahluwalia who finished Day 2 at the 8th spot after receiving
a stop and go penalty, fast-tracked to the 5th position. Interestingly, Monish
and Jeeva who stood 5th on day 2, moved down the order on Day 3, finishing at
7th, as they had a flat tyre twice during the day.
Achieving a hat-trick on day three and
maintaining the same ranks since the beginning of the rally in the Extreme Bike
category, defending champion of Dakshin Dare 2013, Natraj (1:36:05), Mohit
Verma (1:40:04) and Pramod Joshua (1:44:28) stood first, second and third
respectively.
For the third day in a row, Team Maruti
drivers Karthick Maruti and Sankar Anand maintained their supremacy over the
Endurance category with a penalty time of 1:36 as the vehicles traversed 300
kms from Shimoga to Hospet on day three. Grabbing the second spot, Sachin Singh
and Pratima finished the day with a penalty time of 2:14. Again in third place
were Ganesh Murthy and T Nagarajan of Team Maruti.