The India Baja 2018, also known as the ‘Road to Dakar’ concluded yesterday. Lorenzo Santolino from TVS Racing, who made his debut in the event, won the two day event in the Moto class. CS Santosh from Hero MotoSports finished second while Abdul Wahid Tanveer, who earned the ‘Ticket to Dakar’ in the last edition of the India Baja, rounded off the podium. Teammate Harith Noah finished fourth in class A (250cc to 450cc) of the Moto category. TVS Racing had a strong finish overall as three of their riders made it in the top five of class A, including India Baja debutant Harith Noah. CS Santosh missed a checkpoint in the last stage of the rally, which earned him a time penalty of 30 minutes. This ruined whatever chances he had of winning the rally and he had to settle for second place overall, behind the Spaniard.
While the first day had three stages that covered nearly 200km, the second day saw two stages that were held in the desert. The first stage of second day was the longest at 100km. The last stage of the event was the shortest at 35km.
In class B (up to 250cc), Imran Pasha topped the leaderboard followed by Sathyaraj A from Hero MotoSports. Virendra Waghela finished third. In class C Mohan Lal Sharma took the top spot while Vinit Sharma finished second. Nakul Krisheel took third place. Rajendra RE from TVS Racing, who was competing in class B, suffered an injury during the practice, due to which he could compete only in the first stage of the event. Teammate R Nataraj (class A) too suffered an internal injury during the practice. However, he completed all stages of the first day, after which he did not compete in the final two stages of the event.
In the Xtreme category, Arindam Saikia and Jeevarathinam J cruised to victory in their Polaris XP 1000, followed by Himanshu Arora and Kunal Kashyap from Harjee Motorsports. Narayan Balan and Chirag Thakur rounded off the podium in their rally spec Maruti Suzuki Gypsy. In T1 class (up to 1350cc, 4WD), team Desert Raiders sweeped the podium as Narayan Balan, Gurpinder Singh and Sanjay Razdan took the first three positions respectively. In the above 1850cc class (4WD), Rajendra Singh Taarpura and Digvijay Singh Rathore emerged victorious, while Indrojit Sircar and Arpit Mangal in their Nissan Patrol came second.
Taufeeq Mughal finished first in the Quad open class. To spice things up a bit, Northern Motorsport, the organisers, introduced analogue road book for the riders, ditching the GPS system. This tested the navigational skills of riders on the move, thereby increasing the difficulty level. International rallies like the Dakar Rally follow the same method.
Lorenzo now gets a free entry to compete in the Merzouga Rally 2019 and the Dakar Rally 2020 along with monetary benefits amounting to Euro 20,000, which covers the entry costs of both the international rally events. This will provide a big boost for Lorenzo as he has not competed in an FIM event like Dakar Rally, which is the toughest, most grueling off road endurance rally in the world. For our own Dakar hero and international riders like CS Santosh and Lorenzo Santolino, this rally proved to be a mini warm up for the next big international rally events.
After winning the India Baja 2018, Lorenzo said, “This victory is really a very happy moment for me given that I was pretty close to winning the Desert Storm Rally earlier this year in the same terrains, but could not. I would like to thank my whole team and my supporters for making it possible. I think India Baja is a great event. This organization is doing a brilliant job. The stages were sandy yet fast. I would like to thank the organizers for putting exceptional passion in the event; I really enjoyed it.”
When asked about his take on motorsport in India, particularly the 2W Motorsport scenario, Santolino remarked, “I believe Indian motorsport is growing in the right direction. The navigational systems that India Baja mandated this year are at par with what we use in the World Rally Cross Country Championship. Introduction of the road books, no gps tracks, and very few way points are some really exciting developments at this event. I am highly hopeful that step-by-step India motorsport will soon arrive at the level of international motorsport scenario.”
It was a sombre weekend as Asbakmon Tharoth K lost his life in the desert a couple of days before the rally. Angata Racing backed out of the rally because of the unfortunate incident.