After three days and nine stages Sanbir Singh Dhaliwal and Gurpartap Singh Sandhu have amassed 687 points to hold on to their lead. Jagat Nanjappa and Chetan Changappa from V5 Offroaders at 669 points are in second place. Mervyn Lim and Alex Tan from G.O.A Fairmont are in third position at 567 points. Yesterday’s second runners up Chow Ujjal Namshum and Ingpeng Mein finished in fourth place.
The third day RFC was high on drama as the toughest stage yet, SS9, claimed many vehicles. None of the teams finished the stage. Three teams (127,123 and 109) came close but couldn’t finish in time. Team 127 were close to finishing with more than four minutes to go at the last incline but their winch gave in. A few vehicles even toppled while tackling a tricky incline in this stage. For a moment it appeared that the women’s team had conquered the mucky incline but the next moment their vehicle was upside down. None of them were injured. With one slushy incline, one incline strewn with rocks, another challenging incline and the final hurdle of a slope leading to a short wall after which the finish box was located, this stage was the longest and toughest. The defending champions Gurmeet and Kirpal from Gerrari off-roaders almost toppled their vehicle and couldn’t recover in time to finish the stage.
Just a tad easier was SS6, where two short walls broke many vehicles with damaged propeller shafts and gearbox failures. One of the vehicles from MOCA toppled in this stage. The key was to use a ladder to climb up the walls. The depending champions finished this stage easily with the use of ladders. Teams had to descend down gradually, drive down a steep incline and winch out of two short walls. Then they had to take a u-turn to drop down another wall and climb to the slushy incline to the finish box.
SS7 was one of the easy ones of the day. With just one steep slope where vehicles had to descend, take u-turn, winch themselves out of the slope and then take the same route back to the finish box.
The easiest stage by far was stage 8. A sharp drop lead to a small but near vertical incline was followed by a tight turn to negotiate to get to another incline where they had to use the winch again to climb up. They had to drive down the way they had come to get to the finish point.
The next eight stages are happening today and SS10 has already claimed two vehicles with, Team Corac, while going flat out in the second slope and team number 138, which suffered a broken rear axle and gearbox problem on the very first slope.