Aabhishek Mishra retains top spot amid massive upsets

Reigning champion Aabhishek Mishra retained his top spot amid massive upsets in the leaderboard at the end of day 3 of the SS6 of the Desert Storm Rally here Saturday.

Mishra and co-driver Srikanth Gowda from Team Sparky's Garage ended with cumulative timing of 6:44:50.

Team Mahindra Adventure's Gaurav Gill, who was just behind Mishra till the previous day, had a slow stage due to some obstacles and drastically dropped ranks. He is now at the 8th spot with overall timing of 8:08:25.

Another shocker was the premature retirement of veteran rally racer and seven times Desert Storm champion Sunny Sidhu (co-driver Ashwin Naik) in SS6.

The Mahindra Adventure bastion is now solely held by Gill.

With Gill slipping down the points table, Samrat Yadav (co-driver Kunal Kashyap) stormed to claim the second position with cumulative timings of 7:02:19.

The third position is held by Team Sparky Garage's Capt AVS Gill (co-driver Diwakar Kalia) with a cumulative timings of 7:19:33.

Despite a great show, his position is highly vulnerable to the speed streak by Lakhpa Tsering (co-driver V Venu Rameshkumar) who is quickly climbing up in the last few stages. With cumulative timings of 7:19:46, Tsering is now just 16 seconds behind Capt Gill.

At the time of partial provisional results declaration for Day 3 of competitive special stages, Adrian Medge of Team TVS Racing continued to lead the Moto category (2W and quad bikes cross-country rally) for third straight day with the cumulative timings of 5:16:49.

He was closely followed by Hero Motorsport Team Rally's CS Santosh with cumulative timings of 5 hours 23 minutes 35 seconds, who despite being the fastest rider in the SS6 couldn't fill up the time difference between him and Metge.

Santosh was followed by TVS Racing's Tanveer Abdul Wahid on the third position.

In Ndure category, Deepak Sachdeva picked two spots to reach the top of the table with a cumulative leg penalty of 1:03:53. He is tailed by Team Army's Varun K Augustine (co-driver Ramya Venkat) with cumulative leg penalty of 1:06:03 seconds and Ankur Chauhan (Co-Driver Prakash M) with cumulative Leg Penalty of 1:09:33 in Leg 3.

After the third leg of competition, only 21 drivers in Xtreme category, 20 riders in Moto category, and 6 drivers in Ndure category have survived the odds to be eligible to take a start in next and final leg of the competition.