The third round of Zambia Rally Championship was done and dusted this past weekend(08- 09 July) as scheduled on the calendar.
The event was held in Lusaka and organised by the Lusaka Motorsports club.It was named after its official sponsor, Planet Spares.
The reigning champions Leroy Gomes and co-driver Urshilla Gomes powering their ARC champion car Ford fiesta R5″michilika” went on to control the rally from day 1 to the last finish as they won all of the stages and later were crowned victors.
Awesomely, another crew from the Gomes Rally team, Kyle Latife alongside Balveen Latife in their Mitsubishi evo 9 was the closest challenge to Leroy.
Kyle Latie finished second overall with over 07min and 47 seconds down on Leroy making it a double podium for the Gomes Rally Team.
The podium was completed by Kumaren Naidu alongside co driver Aneesh Jhaveri in their Subaru Impreza. Kumaren Naidu is a professional Zambian Swimmer and has represented the country on various international events.
So this rally podium finish is a prestigious one to the Mamba Racing Team driver and athlete, Kumaren Naidu.
Crawford Mwiinga and co driver Vihir patel finished 4th overall with a whooping of 23 mins and 41sec down the leader.
Colin Gander and Masuzyo Tembo of the Gomes Rally Team cruising their Toyota Runx finished 5th with over 32 minutes shy of Leroy Gomes.
However, it was a disastrous event for some of the crews as only 5 of the 11 crews finished the rally. With an engine failure in stage 1, Mujo Simakoloyi was forced to retire early out of the rally.
The baby asassin of Zambia Seth Gomes from the Gomes Rally Team retired in the morning stage of day two after the Mitsubishi evov9 cut o the engine due to an oil leak.
“Basically we were running all good but towards the end of last stage, the car lost power and then tried to put in high gear to keep the revs higher but the car had no power. Then started the car back to service hoping the problem was fixed but it wasn’t. So the car just cut o in this first corner,” said Seth Gomes after retirement on Sunday.
