The fourth round of the Tanzania National Rally Championship took its course on Sunday in Tanga. The town was making its return to the TNRC series after two years.
Sixteen crews resumed the championship chase with Gurpal Sandhu going first off the ramp followed by Dharam Pandya.
At the end of the event, it was Samir Nadhi and co-driver Rahim Suleiman with the fastest times from the six stages competed for.
‘Shanto’ as he is commonly known, kept his pace in the fight for a win topping in three stages and keeping within the top three in the other three stages.
In a Subaru Impreza, ‘Shanto’ posted 1hr, 7mins and 9seconds to register his first event win this season.
Shanto and Suleiman collected maximum 25 points to move into third position on the championship leaderboard with 52 points.
Dharam Pandya and Awadh Bafadhil settled for second position despite a comfortable lead in the early stages of the event.
The crew lost the lead following an off in the third stage that almost claimed the life of a camera man.
“We were moving well not until we had an incident with a camera man who was standing in the racing lines. We hit his camera and the tripod that also damaged the car.
“The incident shocked us. I thought I had hit the guy. I was shaken a bit. So somehow we lost a bit of times after that incident,” said Pandya.
Pandya and Bafadhil however closed the gap on the championship chase to three points behind leader Gerard Miller who has 63 points.
Gurpal Sandhu and James Mwangi sealed the podium in third position overall to move to fifth position on the championship standings.
Abbass Fazal finished fourth while Hassan Hamzan and Zavery Yusuf settled for fifth and sixth respectively.
Lazarus Horn and Herjeet Singh completed the finishers list in seventh and eighth position.
Top five Standings after Tanga Rally
- Gerard Miller 63
- Dharam Pandya 60
- Samir Shanto 52
- Randeep Birdi 43
- Gurpal Sandhu 41