Rana starts favourite in Dakshin Dare Rally

The country's top long-distance rally driver Suresh Rana along with co-driver Parminder Thakur will be headlining the fifth Maruti Suzuki Dakshin Dare Rally commencing here Monday after Sunday's ceremonial flag-off with some 96 vehicles participating in different categories.

While the numbers might change following pre-event scrutiny, the focus will be on Rana who will be driving Maruti Grand Vitara, the same vehicle in which he had won the two other major rallies, the Raid de Himalaya and the Desert Storm.

The five-day Rally, after the flag-off from here early Monday morning, will head to Mysore for a night halt before proceeding to Ooty on Tuesday for the second leg and then on to Coimbatore for the third and fourth legs ahead of the final run back to Bangalore on August 9, covering some 2,000 Kms.

Rana, who hails from the apple town of Manali, has won the Raid eight times and the Storm thrice, but is still to win the Dakshin Dare which he will be attempting a second time after finishing second overall in 2010 with Ashwin Naik as his navigator.

While Rana is the favourite to win the overall crown in the Xtreme category that has received 24 entries and includes other crews with proven credentials like Bangalore's Sanjay Agarwal (Shivaprakash) and Shafiq-ur Rehman from Chikmagalur, both driving the Gypsy, the popular Endurance (TSD) category has 51 contestants while a two-rider TVS team heads the two-wheeler category that has attracted 20 entries.

"The Dakshin Dare is the only major event I have not won and I am looking forward to doing better than the second overall two years ago.

"I have not yet test driven the Vitara as I arrived in Bangalore only today, but I will be able to take the car out on a run tonight," said Rana.

If Rana is expected to dominate the Xtreme category where the participants will have to negotiate Special Stages (closed routes), the competition in the TSD category, which is more about navigational skill, is likely to be close and exciting.

Heading the Endurance field will be 2012 National TSD champion Satish Gopalkrishnan from Bangalore alongside Erode's Karthick Maruti and Ganesh Moorthy, Sachin Singh (Hyderabad), 2010 winner K Prasad (Mysore), Philip Balkin (David Sharon) of Bangalore and Saurav Chatterjee (Ashoke Bhattacharya) of Kolkata.

Making its debut in the Dakshin Dare is the Scooter class in the two-wheeler category with six riders from Chandigarh, Mumbai and Nashik in the fray.