Local privateer Adnaan Ahamed claims Overall honours

Last-minute technical changes force Petronas TVS Racing team to pull out

Local boy Adnaan Ahamed from KAT Racing won the overall honours in the MRF Rally De Mangaluru, the Round 2 of the MRF Mogrip FMSCI 2W National Rally Championship 2022 held around Panja within the Rubber, Palm, and Arecanut plantations organized by Ace Events recently. The two Special Stages at Shri Kshetra Panja close to Shri Kshetra Kukke Subramanya temple, namely Panjabeedu, a stage of 9.5 kms was cut down by about 600mts due to dampness caused by heavy rains overnight and the other Special Stage was Karikala, 4.6km long. Both were run four times in the same direction accumulating to over 50 kms of special stage distance.

The rally for the second consecutive time was held under unscheduled rainy conditions. The last-minute cropping up of technical issues raised by the Federation on the external fuel pump fitting, was not possible to be completed within a short notice period, as it was a back-to-back rounds. So, the Petronas TVS Racing team decided to pull out from this round as the talks which went on up to late night between the team, technical delegate and the technical commission failed to resolve the issue, despite being allowed in the season opener. This let the ground open up for privateers on a dramatic day of slush and action.

Overall:

Adnaan Ahamed from Mangaluru, riding a Hero Xpulse, dominated the first four stages and and won the Overall first place clocking a total time of 53:43.222sec. Sathyaraj Arumugam from Hero Motosports riding a Hero Impulse finished second with over 4min, 28-sec difference. His Hero teammate, Yuva Kumar from Bengaluru, came third, about 35 seconds behind, to hold on to the podium.