KOLHAPUR: The ongoing Maruti Suzuki Dakshin Dare has been an intense affair between the current top-three teams in the Ultimate Cars category: Suresh Rana and Ashwin Naik, Samrat Yadav and SN Nizami, and Sandeep Sharma and Karan Arya.
Looking at the kind of form they are in, the three teams look set to end their campaign on the podium when the ‘Dare’ culminates in Pune on Friday.
Though driving a much-less powerful car as compared to Rana’s Grand Vitara, Samrat in his yellow Gypsy has set the pulse racing with leading performances in the first two days. A crash on the third day resulted in him losing the top slot.
In a chat with Express on Thursday, Samrat exclaimed that if it was a ‘Gypsy vs Gypsy’ fight, he would have prevailed most of the time. “Rana bhaiyya has a 2400cc vehicle, while I drive a 1600cc one. Even with this power gap, I have given him a tough fight. The time gap between Sandeep bhaiyya and I is a huge 16-minute difference,” said the outspoken LLB undergraduate.
Incessant rains and gusts reduced Leg 4 to just one stage for Ultimate Cars and Ultimate Bikes categories in Kolhapur. That was all the 26-year-old needed to reduce the one-minute, 13-second gap between him and Rana to only 38 seconds.
“If I had the chance to go through all the three scheduled stages, I would have definitely trumped him,” Samrat, who finished second at the Dakshin Dare in his very first attempt in 2015, said.
With the rally set to witness a showdown between Rana and Samrat on the final day, the latter appeared pumped. “I have come here to win. I will give my 100 per cent on the final day.”
Samrat had suffered a serious back injury at the Raid de Himalaya in 2015. But that has not diluted his zeal.
“Some people are saying I should take it easy. But my aim is to do everything that I can to win.”
The youngster’s team, which has Nizami as the navigator, is not sponsored by a big company like Maruti Suzuki, which happens to be the sponsors of the other two occupants of the top three. “I have spent more than `1 crore on my rallies in the last five years. They (Rana and Sandeep) do not have to worry about all that.” Samrat also claimed that the cost of the shock-absorbers fitted in Rana’s car was four times the price of his Gypsy.
vishal@newindianexpress.com