Rana, Helmut win Raid de Himalaya

Suresh Rana/Ashwin Naik, driving a Grand Vitara, were crowned champions in the X-Treme four-wheeler category while Helmut Frauwallner lifted the trophy in the two-wheeler category as the 15th edition of the Maruti Suzuki Raid De Himalaya culminated here today.
Rana won the coveted trophy for an astonishing ninth time, and his second with Naik as co-driver.
Rana described his win as "fantastic" but rued the fact that there was less rivalry in this edition of the most exciting motorsport event in India.
"I want more teams to participate so that competition level goes up. As of now, I am the only one here. Sunny Sidhu is the driver who could have challenged me. Overall, it's been a fanstastic win for me," said Rana.

Rana had an overall timing of 9:46:23 hrs over six days.
Sanjay Agarwal/Shiv Prakash, driving a Gypsy, finished as first runner-up with cumulative timing of 10:10:35 hrs while Harpreet Bawa/Parminder Thakur were second runner-up having clocked 10:11:23 hrs.

Jagmeet Gill/Chandan Sen of Team Maruti lifted the trophy in the Adventure Trial 4W category with an overall penalty of 0.03.46 hrs.
Subir Roy/Md Mustafa was first runner up with a penalty of 0.03.53 hrs while Kaushal Patel/Gaurav Patel were ranked overall third with cumulative penalty of 0.04.01 hrs.
The rally travelled 1800 kms over six days which included the highest motorable passes and inhospitable sub zero temperatures.

Frauwallner from Austria was crowned champion in the X-Treme 2W category with a cumulative timing of 9.09.54 hrs. Stephan Rausch from Germany clocked 10.08.05 hrs and finished as first runner-up while Bangalore based R Nataraj was second runner up with an cumulative timing of 11.05.10 hrs.
"Last year, it was tough for me as I had some physical issues. But this year, I was fit and drove really fast," said the 55-year-old Frauwallner.
In this edition, out of the 75 cars, bikes and scooters that had entered the X-Treme category, 29 finished the rally - inclusive of all 5 participants in the newly created Scooters category.