Khalid Imran, Rasheed turn tables

Ultimate category drivers Khalid Imran and Rasheed, in Maruti Suzuki Esteem, got a narrow lead over the overnight leaders Manoj Vaidya and Uday Kumar on the second day in the third edition of Maruti Suzuki Dakshin Dare Rally in Coimbatore on Tuesday.

In the bike segment, Pramod Joshua of Team TVS maintained his lead while in the endurance (time-speed-distance) category, which ended late night, saw Satish Gopalkrishanan and Savera D’Souza taking a narrow lead over Pune’s Sanjay Takale and Rahul Sancheti.

After the tedious drive from hot and humid Chennai on previous day, the drivers in endurance category experienced the chilly and misty weather when they took the 45km ghats of Kodaikanal to reach Coimbatore via exotic locales like Theni, Bodhi, Kerala borders around Munnar, Kalahatti plantations covering a total distance of 457km.

On the other hand, ultimate category drivers and bike riders came down crossing several dangerous curves and equally numbered hairpin bends of picturesque Nilgiri Mountains to reach Puduvaikkal canal stage which starts from Purandalar dam.

After going twice around the 28 km gravel track, with sudden stony patches and multiple deep bumps along, the rally went through a transport stage of 113 kms to reach Coimbatore.

The Imran-Rasheed team is now leading with a timing of 01.33.42 hrs, while Manoj-Uday in their Maruti Suzuki Gypsy clocked 01.35.00 hrs. Sunil Shetty and Darayash D, driving a Maruti Suzuki Gypsy again have retained their third place with 01.44.17 hrs.

Meanwhile, Joshua continued his lead with a timing of 01.21.03 hrs, while Rohit Gowda and Venu Ramesh Kumar came up with a marvellous performance today to overtake overnight leaders.