The first leg of Maruti Suzuki Desert Storm 2018 culminated in Bikaner after covering a total distance of 217 km. The participants battled it out to grab the lead in their respective categories in the 16th edition of the rally.
In the Xtreme category, Suresh Rana from Team Maruti Suzuki Motorsport was seen leading the rally by completing the leg first along with his navigator PVS Murthy in his Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara. Following their lead was Aabhishek Mishra and his navigator V Venu Rameshkumar and Gaurav Chiripal with navigator, Srikanth Gowda who finished third.
In the Moto category, CS Santosh took the lead in the first leg followed by Aaron Mare and Sanjay Kumar who came a close third. Santosh, who opened the first special section, completed the 86.5 km special in 01 h 10 min to finish the leg 1 of the rally in the lead.
NDure category:
- Desert Raiders: Lt Col Sukhjeet Singh Dhaliwal & Lenin J (Penalty – 00:21:00)
- Desert Raiders: Gurpinder Singh & Mrinmoy Saha (Penalty – 0:21:55)
- Ruchit Jadhaw & Aditya Garg (Penalty – 0:22:34)
Xplore category
- Nipun Agrawal & Kabir Mansharamani (Penalty – 00:09:07)
- Desert Raiders: Vishal Choudhary & Abhivek Singh Godara (Penalty – 01:13:12)
- Surendra Gopu & Hardeep Singh (Penalty – 01:30:04)
Moto category
- C S Santosh – Hero MotoSports Team Rally (01h 10m 44s)
- Aaron Mare – Angata Racing (+6m 47s0
- Sanjay Kumar – Angata Racing (+9m 55s)
- Tanveer Abdul Wahid – TVS Racing (+17m 06s)
- R Nataraj – TVS Racing (+19m 04s)
Maruti Suzuki Desert Storm 2018 will now move towards Jaisalmer for the second leg of the rally.