Following is the report Indian’s win in Malaysia..



Isuzu D-Max driver Lohitt Urs, navigated by very experienced Musa
Sherif ,put in a masterful drive in the last stage of the recent AAM
Malaysian 4x4 Rally Championship to record his second win in the
championship and deny local boy Chong Wee Siang of his maiden rally
triumph. The win puts Lohitt in a commanding position to take his
first international rally title as he builds a 10-point lead over
defending champion William Mei with one event left in the
championship.

“I am very happy to have been able to get this win. Everyone had a
very difficult day today and to have won in the last stage is really
satisfying. The D-Max was absolutely fantastic. The performance kept
us on pace throughout the event and we managed to push it even harder
in the last stage to record our second win,” said Lohitt.

Driving a Modified T1 Category Isuzu D-Max, Chong was the early pace
setter winning both the opening day’s stages run near the Sepang F-1
circuit with relative ease. He was pursued by a trio of Isuzu drivers
including Lohitt, Mei and Teoh Kok Seng who piloted an Isuzu Invader.

The expected challenge from Mitsubishi failed to materialize when
championship hopeful Lim Seng Hai suffered a broken intercooler hose
in his Mitsubishi Triton and had to crawl through SS2, losing some
eight minutes to the leaders and effectively dropping him out of
contention.

With rain falling heavily in the night, SS3 the next morning turned
out to be a nightmare stage for almost all the crews. The 40km stage
near Rantau in Negeri Sembilan saw nearly all the crews going off the
road at one point or other.

“The stage was extremely slippery and narrow. There were many tricky
junctions and once you made a mistake, it could be terminal,” said
William Mei who himself had two excursions into the myriad of ditches
in the stage.

Lohitt too had his moment of encounter with the undergrowth. “We went
wide in one of the corners and we ended up sliding down a slippery
slope. Thankfully a tree stopped us from going all the way down the
hill. It looked like our rally was over then as we were there for a
good ten minutes trying to extricate ourselves. Eventually we decided
to try using the Touch-On-The-Fly to select 4L and charged our way
back onto the road,” said Lohitt.

Lim, who was now suffering suspension problems, and team mate Eric Law
also had their excursions off the road and it was a challenge just to
extricate themselves and get to the finish line. Lohitt, despite
almost loosing the rally,going off the cliff and also having stopped
to help William Mei and Eric Law, who were stuck in the stage because
of extreme conditions , emerged from the stage in the quickest time
of one hour 20.59, marginally quicker than Chong who despite not going
off the road suffered numerous navigational errors.

Lohitt who hails from Mysore in India was 2:19 behind the Johor-based
team going into the final stage and at 45km, the longest stage of the
event, it was a race between the pair as third-placed Teoh was a
further seven minutes back.

The Indian driver put in a determined charge and the reward was sweet
victory with a winning margin of one minute 35 seconds. “The race was
fantastic throughout the weekend. We had to push very hard to get our
second win and the car and the team really performed well despite the
rough and difficult conditions,” said Lohitt. "Navigation was very
tricky this time and Musa's job was very important in our victory," he
added.

The affable Chong took the loss in his stride. “Second is really not
too bad. The win will come one day so I will just bide my time. We
made some mistakes today. The roads were tricky and we took some wrong
turns so we lost a lot of time. But it’s OK. We drove well throughout
the event and that’s more important to me. The car was also fantastic.
The D-Max did not give us any problems at all and the performance was
very good. We clearly had the fastest car in the field but more
importantly, the car was tough and took the rough roads well,” said
Chong.

In third place was a surprised Teoh who brought home the older Isuzu
Invader despite being down on power to the Super Commonrail Isuzu
D-Max that dominated the field including fourth-placed Mei who had the
services of Thai co-driver Visut Sukosi standing in for Jagdev Singh
who had other commitments.

Mei was unlucky to have lost a significant amount of time in SS3 when
he went off the road in a slippery grassy corner. “Some of these
corners were incredibly tricky. They look wide but once you get off
line, the ditches just suck you in,” he said.

With the winner’s circle dominated by Isuzu vehicles, it was a proud
day for CEO of Isuzu Malaysia Takashi Hata who said that the clean
sweep proved the superior engineering and performance of the vehicles.

“The immensely tough nature of 4x4 rallies demands that vehicles are
engineered beyond the expectations of the ordinary motorist. For a
vehicle to complete the race is already an achievement. For all our
cars to beat the rest in the competition, it is a feat of engineering
excellence,” said Hata.