Naren goes smoothly in testing conditions

By C. Santhosh Kumar

Jyvaskyla, Finland

Aug. 1: When Naren Kumar rolled his car back to the service area on Friday he was a happy man. While an array of drivers, including one of the favourites Jari-Matti Latvala, failed to cope with demanding conditions at the Rally of Finland here, Naren kept his head down and brought the car home, crossing one of the most difficult stages on the way. He was running 14th with two stages to go on the first day. The early morning showers made the life difficult for the drivers and the frequent crests and bumps didn’t help either.

The Coimbatore driver had a decent start and finished 12th in the 2.06km Killeri Super Special stage. He was consistently in the top-15 until the fifth stage, where he made couple of errors and lost the opportunity to cut into the top-10 bracket. "Midway through the fifth stage I had a spin. The roads were rough after the morning showers and the car hit a bump and I couldn’t control it after that. On another occasion, I saw a spectator trying to cross the road and a marshall stopped him in time, but that distracted me. With 50m to the finish, I had to take a sharp right and I missed that," Naren said.

Naren said he was happy with his opening day timings. "We did a pretty good job in the morning. The speed is in patches here. Since the roads are punctuated with sharp curves I could not push more. However, the jumps were easier than expected," said Naren.

Wild card entry Juha Salo leads his fellow Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX drivers Juho Hanninen and Patrik Flodin. Salo moved into the lead with fastest P-WRC time on the Mokkipera test and remained there with successive quickest times in Palsankyla and the second run through Vellipohja.

In the WRC, four time champion Sebastian Loeb, who is yet to register his first win here, is on top of the leaderboard.