– C S Santosh wins the last stage to finish 2nd overall
Hero MotoSports Team Rally brought a fitting close to their campaign in the 11th edition of the Desert Storm Rally, with a second back to back stage win in the final leg of the rally. Team rider C S Santosh claimed his second stage win of the rally today, securing the 2nd place finish in the overall rankings.
It was another clinical stage for Santosh as he made good of the 80km final stage, getting the better of his competitors to win the stage.
With this result, Hero MotoSports Team Rally has now made it to two podium in two races in their new season with the Merzouga Rally and now, the Desert Storm Rally. This has been a great start to their season and very encouraging results for the entire team as they now look to prepare for perhaps the most important rally of the season besides the Dakar – the Silkway Rally, scheduled from 6-16th July in the Russia – Mongolia – China region.
The final Leg of the Rally will saw the riders make a dash for the last of the special stages covering 81 kms in the Sam dunes before bringing to close, the 11th edition of India’s biggest cross-country rally, the Desert Storm.
C S Santosh, Rider, Hero MotoSports Team Rally said « It’s been four good days of racing at the Desert Storm Rally. First of all I am really happy that I managed to remain incident free with no crashes big or small and no penalties, which has been an area of concern for me in the past few years. I am also quite happy to be able to compete with Metge, who is an incredible rider, my congratulations to him on the win. I learnt a lot while racing with him over these 4 days. Our team works really well together and they did an incredible job in supporting me, also I must say that my Hero 450 RR is an incredibly reliable bike and has been my solid partner in all the races I have done across the world. I am happy to put in a good performance in this race coming after a gap of almost 4 months after my Dakar crash and also coming back to Desert Storm after I crashed here last time. So many positives to take back home and now it’s time for me to start building up towards the Dakar 2020. »
Wolfgang Fischer, Team Manager and Head – Hero MotoSports Team Rally said « It was a really good race for the team and a good outcome as well. Desert Storm is an important rally for the team, being the biggest rally to be help on our home turf, so we always look forward to delivering a good performance here. It was also an important race for Santosh to make a comeback into competitive rallying. So we are happy to have met both our objectives. It has been a good start for the season for us with two podium wins now, and we look forward to continue building up on this momentum as we go into the next set of the races. »
Overall results
1. Adrian Metge, Sherco TVS Racing, 06h 13m 25s
2. C S Santosh, Hero MotoSports Team Rally, +5m 35s
3. Tanveer Abdul Wahid, TVS Racing, +22m 03s
4. R Nataraj, TVS Racing, +44m 09s
5. Vishwas SD, Harjee Motorsport, +02h 07m 47s…
Press Release,