India’s Lohitt Urs led an Isuzu clean sweep of the top spots during the recent third round of the AAM Malaysian 4x4 Rally Championship 2009. Isuzu vehicles took the top four spots underlining its durability and performance prowess as the season looks set to be a showdown between three Isuzu drivers for this year’s championship.

According to CEO of Isuzu Malaysia Takashi Hata, the absolute domination of Isuzu in the event clearly proves the clear advantage the drivers had simply by choosing to use one of the most durable and powerful machines in the market today.

“Motor rallying is arguably one of the most intense forms of motor racing where machines are pushed to their mechanical limits with every kilometer of the race. Clearly, with Isuzu taking all the top four spots and every Isuzu entered finishing the rally, there is a distinct mechanical advantage each driver enjoyed,” said Hata.

The drivers this time faced a very tough event and this was clearly the sentiment of all the drivers.

“I am very happy to have been able to get this win. Everyone had a very difficult day race and to have won in the last stage is really satisfying. The D-Max was absolutely fantastic. The performance kept us on pace throughout the event and we managed to push it even harder in the last stage to record our second win,” said Lohitt.

Driving a similar Isuzu D-Max, Chong was the early pace setter winning both the opening day’s stages run near the Sepang F-1 circuit with relative ease. He was pursued by a trio of Isuzu drivers including Lohitt, Mei and Teoh Kok Seng who piloted an Isuzu Invader.

The expected challenge from Mitsubishi failed to materialize when championship hopeful Lim Seng Hai suffered a broken intercooler hose in his Mitsubishi Triton and had to crawl through SS2, losing some eight minutes to the leaders and effectively dropping him out of contention.

With rain falling heavily in the night, SS3 the next morning turned out to be a nightmare stage for almost all the crews. The 40km stage near Rantau in Negeri Sembilan saw nearly all the crews going off the road at one point or other.

“The stage was extremely slippery and narrow. There were many tricky junctions and once you made a mistake, it could be terminal,” said William Mei who himself had two excursions into the myriad of ditches in the stage.

Lohitt too had his moment of encounter with the undergrowth. “We went wide in one of the corners and we ended up sliding down a slippery slope. Thankfully a tree stopped us from going all the way down the hill. It looked like our rally was over then as we were there for a good ten minutes trying to extricate ourselves. Eventually we decided to try using the Touch-On-The-Fly to select 4L and charged our way back onto the road,” said Lohitt.

Lim, who was now suffering suspension problems, and team mate Eric Law also had their excursions off the road and it was a challenge just to extricate themselves and get to the finish line. Lohitt, despite almost giving up, emerged from the stage in the quickest time of one hour 20.59, marginally quicker than Chong who despite not going off the road suffered numerous navigational errors.

Lohitt who hails from Mysore in India was 2:19 behind the Johor-based team going into the final stage and at 45km, the longest stage of the event, it was a race between the pair as third-placed Teoh was a further seven minutes back.

The Indian driver put in a determined charge and the reward was sweet victory with a winning margin of one minute 35 seconds. “The race was fantastic throughout the weekend. We had to push very hard to get our second win and the car and the team really performed well despite the rough and difficult conditions,” said Lohitt.

The affable Chong took the loss in his stride. “Second is really not too bad. The win will come one day so I will just bide my time. We made some mistakes today. The roads were tricky and we took some wrong turns so we lost a lot of time. But it’s OK. We drove well throughout the event and that’s more important to me. The car was also fantastic. The D-Max did not give us any problems at all and the performance was very good. We clearly had the fastest car in the field but more importantly, the car was tough and took the rough roads well,” said Chong.

In third place was a surprised Teoh who brought home the older Isuzu Invader despite being down on power to the Super Commonrail Isuzu D-Max that dominated the field including fourth-placed Mei who had the services of Thai co-driver Visut Sukosi standing in for Jagdev Singh who had other commitments.

Mei was unlucky to have lost a significant amount of time in SS3 when he went off the road in a slippery grassy corner. “Some of these corners were incredibly tricky. They look wide but once you get off line, the ditches just suck you in,” he said.

All five Isuzu vehicles that took part in the race completed the event and proves beyond doubt that durability conquers all.

Results