Mishra, Metge, Chauhan emerge champions at Desert Storm Rally

Jaisalmer : Defending champions Aabhishek Mishra of Team Sparky's Garage and his co-driver Srikanth Gowda won the the Xtreme Category of the Desert Storm Rally here on Saturday.

TVS Racing's Adrian Metge won the hotly contested Moto Category (cross country rally for motorbikes) with a cumulative time of 6:13:25s. The Ndure category was won by Ankur Chauhan and co-driver Prakash M with best rankings in all five legs.

With this win, Mishra joined the likes of Suresh Rana and Sunny Sidhu to have successfully defended their Desert Storm Xtreme title.

Driving a Toyota Fortuner for the first time in a rally, Samrat Yadav and co-driver Kunal Kashyap displayed phenomenal consistency throughout the rally to clinch the second spot with cumulative timings of 9:41:34s.

He was closely followed by Lakhpa Tsering and co-driver V Venu Rameshkumar in their Polaris RZR 1000, who despite being slow in the earlier stages gained time quickly and finished the rally with cumulative timings of 9:47:30s.

The fourth and fifth spot were claimed by Capt AVS Gill (co-driver Diwakar Kalia) and Sanjay Razdan (co-driver Karan Aukta) with cumulative timings of 10:09:59s and 10:23:07s respectively.

"This win feels incredibly special to me and my co-driver due to the fact that we were competing against some of the top teams & best rally racers in the country and we came out victorious despite being budget privateers," Mishra said.

"We always had a strategy in mind which was to stay consistent in the initial few days and preserve the vehicle for the 200 km stage.

Till the day of 200 km stage we had started to realize that Team Mahindra Adventure was falling apart and our vehicle was still pretty much in good shape.

From there onwards, we upped our game and went straight for the kill," Mishra said.

In Moto category, Metge was closely followed by CS Santosh from Hero Motorsport Team Rally with cumulative timings of 6:19:00s. Santosh couldn't get past the time difference between the two that was created after the second day.

The third spot was claimed by TVS Racing's Abdul Wahid Tanveer who clocked a cumulative timings of 6:35:28s.

In Ndure category, Ankur was followed by Capt Abhilasha Singh (co-driver Aashish Agarwal) and Team Army Adventure Wing's Aman Katoch (co-driver Siddhartha Nandal) at second and third positions respectively. The Ndure category results are evaluated on the basis of average rank after all five legs.

The other key awards that were announced include the Team Trophy – Xtreme that went to Team Army Adventure Wing, Team Trophy – Moto that went to TVS Racing, Team Trophy – Ndure which was also won by Team Army Adventure Wing.

Coupe des Dames (Best Female Contender) Award went to Khyati Mody in the Xtreme category, Aishwarya Pissay in Moto category and to Capt Abhilasha Singh in the Ndure category.