2009 was an extremely exciting and challenging year from a professional standpoint. I kept a busy calendar and dabbled in new and unique experiences that I cherish greatly. I reached many personal milestones and performed well in some very challenging conditions.
It was a year of new and varied engagements; I drove three different cars for three different team set-ups, with three different navigators and three different championships. It was also a year of numerous firsts and some pioneering ventures for me and my teams.
I drove in the Production World Rally Championships (PWRC), the Asia Pacific Rally Championship(APRC) and our very own Indian National Rally Championship(INRC). Suffice to say that 2009 was a very busy year for me.
The year started with a trial by fire in the PWRC. I was driving the feisty Subaru Impreza STi for Team Sidvin India. Besides being my proud privilege to have represented the country, it was also a huge learning experience for me as the WRC is a completely different animal- the cars are much faster, the route challenging and there are many more variables to consider. I particularly enjoyed interacting with Tommi Makkinen who was developing our cars and supporting our team.
I competed in the Cyprus and Portugal rounds of the 2009 championship and ran well. In Portugal, we were running 4th before suffering a mechanical setback that made us finish in 7th place. Owing to logistical challenges and team sponsor issues, we pulled out of the PWRC and I decided to concentrate on the APRC and devote my complete attention to Team MRF duties.
We drive factory supported Mitsubishi Ralliart cars in the APRC and this time I was given the Mitsubishi Evo X, which was being run and tested for the first time in any competitive championship. This was again a huge honor and responsibility for me as Ralliart was counting on the feedback from us to aid further development of their flagship motorsport platform.
The car had absolutely no test miles and everyone knew that it was going to be a very rigorous development programme. I was excited, I considered this to be a great learning experience for me and also for the Mitsubishi Ralliart engineers. You might be aware that the Evo X has some of the most advanced electronic systems onboard, the task got even more challenging considering the new firmware that our cars were running. I could feel the car get better drastically through the season. The onus to continually develop the car and perform at the one of the highest level of professional motorsport was a great high for me.
I’m very proud of the fact that throughout the season, I consistently posted faster times than my team mate, Katsu Taguchi who was running a much more evolved and stable Evo IX platform.
We started our APRC season in Australia with a brand new car and immediately started having massive brake and engine problems. Despite these debilitating factors, we managed to run third throughout the rally; unfortunately, we picked up a puncture in the last stage and lost a lot of time. We had a rather dramatic finish to the rally, we pulled into the service park on three wheels!!! My guess is that the team did not enjoy it as much! I finished Rally Australia in 4th position. I consider it a good result given the under-developed car and my unlucky last stage puncture.
We then moved to New Zealand, a beautiful event that is known for its fast sweeping corners and long stages(sometimes upto 35 kilometers). Considering the brakes issues we had in Australia, I knew this was going to be a challenging event for our team. We noticed that our brakes we catching fire on some of the longer stages. The rally came to a premature end for me when I hit a wooden fence, damagingthe oil cooler, at the time of the accident, we were running 4th overall.
After that we were off to Rally Hokkaido, Japan. This was a home event for our manufacturers and they did a great job of setting up the car for the local conditions. The car performed admirably and we set the fastest stage times consistently. Fastest stage times are a uniquely fulfilling experience for a rally driver as it is a measure of your relative speed to competition; I must say I enjoy these little treats. Bad luck hit us again and the brakes failed, we had a soft roll that put us out of contention. I rejoined under the super-rally format and earned bonus points for stage and leg times.
The next APRC event was in Malaysia, a rally where I was confident of doing very well as I had competed there previously. Moreover, I could acclimatize very quickly and felt at home. The brakes were a worry area for us on the Evo X and yet again we had massive brake issues in the stages. The rally ended for us when we had multiple punctures and had to stop mid-stage to change tires, the jack collapsed in the mud and our chances went with it. I rejoined in the super rally and posted 5 fastest stage times out of six- this gave the team a lot of heart, we had the speed against our competition, it was only the reliability that we had to find. Post Malaysia, I was confident that we were heading in the right direction with our car’s development.
We moved to Rally Indonesia. This would definitely rate as my favorite rally on the calendar as this was the venue of my first APRC win. The team confidence is high as Brembo and Mitubishi had worked hard at trying to solve our braking problems, they came with a new compound for the hot temperatures we were to encounter at the Gudam Garam Rally, and to my delight and they were spot on. We were also running freshly developed MRF tyres and managed to clock the fastest times through the stages. But bad luck came to haunt us again, the gearbox blew just as we were looking to repeat our past years success. We later found a manufacturing defect to be the cause of this failure. We again rejoined in the super rally format. Posting fastest stage times yet again, we managed to get the maximum possible bonus points.
The last event of the APRC season was Rally China, undoubtedly the most difficult rally of the calendar- it called for some superhuman driving and was also challenging in terms of the reliability of the vehicle. The terrain was tough, consisting mainly of mountain roads which were hard and abrasive on the tyres and the suspension. We had started the rally with a very soft tyre compound and paid for it dearly very early on, we had two punctures in the first two stages and lost time. We decided to radically change our tyre choice and opted for the hardest tyre compound we had. Immediately we improved and were only a second slower than Cody who was leading the event.
As I look back on the season, I would like to thank my co-driver, Glen. He’s become a great friend and I’ve learnt a lot from him- he’s a great co-driver, a driver coach and an engineer. I’d say he’s the perfect package, and a great foil for me. I can say that I’ve been getting quicker as we do more events together and I hope we can take these learning into the next season when we are targeting to win the championship for Team MRF and India.
I also competed in the INRC in 2009 and would write a separate report for the National Championship as I believe it deserves it own place. Watch out for my INRC report in the next few days.
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