Jas Mangat and Joseph Kamya were lucky to have finished the Rallye international du Burundi. A string of mechanical incidents blighted the charge in what had been a perfect start.
Sunday’s leg was a nightmare as they could only force their Mitsubishi EvoX through the final stages in Ngozi, Burundi.
The EvoX developed gearbox issues and the crew had to limp through the two Sunday morning stages losing more than a minute in each.
The issues seemed big as they could not fix the problem after the morning service. They would yet again drive to survive at a slower pace just to get to the finish.
Fortunately, the Pilipili team had no competition for their solid third position and all they had to do was to finish and secure the points.
“The finish is so great despite the gear box giving us a lot of issues. We could not ask for more at this point,” said Mangat.
“The ARC is still mid way, we still have three more rounds to go. so we look forward to it and to bring a new car. A lot of testing needs to happen before that, we hope we will be ready by next event,” he added.
Mangat and Kamya secured valuable points to remain second on the ARC leaderboard with 63 points; 15 points behind ARC leader Yasin Nasser.
Mangat is expected to be behind the wheels of his newly acquired Hyundai i20 rally2 for the next ARC round in Rwanda on 22-24 September.