MRC ’09 Rd 4 – Saladin takes top honours

Building on his advantage earned during the first leg, Saladin Mazlan of the Felda Rally Team held off the spirited challenge of Karamjit Singh to finish first in Round 4 of the Malaysian Rally Championship 2009 at Ladang KLIA, Sepang, clocking a time of 1:23:50.1. In doing so, Saladin simultaneously took home first-place trophies for the Overall race, and in the 4WD and P12 categories.

Saladin Mazlan powers to victory

National rally ace Karamjit, racing for GSR Pennzoil Racing Team, fought valiantly, but found Saladin’s 24.4 second lead too big a hurdle to overcome, managing to only slash it to 20.1 seconds.

“We were the fastest overall today, we won the Leg, but we couldn’t make up the time we lost yesterday.  We found a leak in our turbo pipe in the first Service today which had been slowing us down.  That fixed, we pushed as hard as we could but there weren’t enough kilometres in the Stages to reduce the time,” said Karamjit’s co-driver Jagdev Singh.

“Saladin drove a superb rally and did a beautiful job,” Jagdev added. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had competition like this. This is what rallying is all about!”

A delighted Saladin drove his Proton Gen.2 home to a jubilant team.  “We were pushing all the way but we were always in control.  I think we have another ten percent to give, so in the next rally, the battle will continue,” Saladin said. “To win like this gives us a good feeling.”

As Saladin and Karamjit pushed each other hard in a neck-and-neck finished, they had also left Gunaseelan Rajoo and Muhammad Rafiq Udhaya comfortably behind them in 3rd and 4th placing. Guna finished 10:57 behind Karamjit, followed by Rafiq a further 44 seconds behind.

Rafiq, who had finished third in the first day, slammed his Subaru Impreza into a tree at Special Stage (SS) 19, to clear the way for Guna to take the last remaining podium spot. Rafiq did, however, take home the N4 category trophy.

Fastest among the two-wheel drivers was Clayton Check from Hong Kong, who also won the P11 category, while Faidzal Alang topped the P10 and Junior categories. The P9 category was won by the brother-sister team of Jamaluddin and Rozita Tukimin.

With 20 stages to cover in two days, Round 4 of MRC 2009 put the competitors through 481.08 grueling kilometres. The final round of the MRC this season will take place in Perak on 5 & 6 December 2009.

Competitors were put through a grueling race

KON

Pictures from: www.malaysianrally.com