Naren struggles out of Rally Japan on second day

Sapporo, Nov 1 (UNI) Team Sidvin India driver Naren Kumar had to retire from the Rally of Japan on the second Day due to turbo failure.

Continuing his fine form that Naren had achieved on Day one, he comfortably finished Stage 11 and Stage 12. While in Stage 13 Naren had to stall due to turbo faluire.

The turbo was fixed in service and Naren will continue tomorrow under super rally format.

''The engineers are looking into the data for the cause of failure and hopefully the report would be out by the end of tomorrow,'' said Managing director of TMR Esko Rainers.

However, unlike day one, second day of the rally has had all the stages ran without any major problems.

The 18-year-old Russian, Evgeny Novikov continued to lead the PWRC category on Day 2 with a total time of 2 hours, 34 minutes and 1.3 seconds.

The expected surprise of the second day was the rapid climb of Juho Hanninen tothe overall second position from ninth position that he secured on day one.

Hanninen closed Day two with a total time of 2 hours, 34 minutes and 20.4 seconds. The difference between Novikov and Hanninen being only 19.1 seconds. The day one runner-up, Toshi Arai has been pushed to third position, lagging Hanninen by just 1.7 seconds.

Apart from Naren, day two also saw the exit of Martin Ruaum, Stefano Marrini, Subhan Aksa and Armindo Araujo.

In the WRC category, Mikko Hirvonen continues to lead the rally with a total time of 2 hours, 21 minutes and 31.8 seconds.

Hirvonen is followed by Jari-Matti Latvala and Sebastien Loeb.

UNI XC RKM AB AS1954