Mike Young crashed on day one but completed day two as Sri Lankan team EZY Racing finished the Malaysian Rally on a disappointing note at the Oil Palm Plantations of Kota Tinggi.
Indian Team MRF’s Swedish driver Pontus Tidemand took home the Malaysian Rally title while extending his lead in the overall championship classification in the Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC).
Tidemand won the first stage in a time of 21:14.6 mins, while Young’s Subaru Impreza WRX STi co-driven by Malcon Reed slammed into a bank damaging the left front of the car. Though the duo tried to finish the stage, a flat tyre did not help his cause as he was unable to finish within the stipulated time, meaning they were out for the whole of first day without any points.
“There were a lot of positives that we took out of the whole thing. The experience will be really beneficial going forward. How Mike performed overall was very encouraging. Our plan was to be up there with the MRFs (two MRF cars driven by Tidemand and Gaurav Gill). It’s impossible to beat MRFs at every stage. The alternate thing we were planning was to be up there as close as possible. If an MRF was to slow down and lose about 10-15 seconds, then to be close enough to benefit from that was out plan,” a dejected Founder and Team Principal of EZY Racing Shafraz Hamzadeen added.
However, Young rode like a man on a mission to sandwich himself between the two MRF’s in the opening stage (9th stage overall) of day two. Tidemand won the stage in 06:32.889 while Young finished in 06:52.714. Gill was third in that stage on 07:01.749.
Despite the inspired performance, Young had to drive the rest of the day with caution on advice of his technical team Cusco keeping an eye on the long term success in the next round of the APRC in Japan.
“I need to have some patience and make sure to approach any fast corners a bit slower. That way, when you get to a sharp corner, you are ready to break. Also break a little bit harder than I have done,” said Young on what he had learnt from day one.
Representing Advent Rally Sport Sri Lankan driver Dinesh Deheragoda had to retire from the rally in the 12th stage due to a broken power steering belt.
“We could have driven on without power steering, but this same belt is used to power a water pump. Without this water pump working, the engine was getting heated up. It was too bad, but we hope to put up a more serious challenge in the next round in Japan,” Deheragoda added.
Deheragoda finished second in the Asia Cup last year with EZY Racing.
Final result:
1. Pontus Tidemand (Sweden) – Skoda S2000 – 03:05:11.5
2. Gaurav Gill (India) – Skoda S2000 – 03:07:08.0
3. Fan Fan (China) – Southeast Motor Mitsubishi – 03:26:58.8
