Damaged steering rod forces Naren Kumar to cut short shakedown run

Antalya, Turkey, Jun 13 (UNI) Team Sidvin driver Naren Kumar suffered a minor hiccup ahead of the Rally of Turkey here when a bent steering rod for him to cut short the mandatory shakedown run.

Naren and his co-driver Nicky Beech straightened the rod themselves to resume with the run but the incident forced them to curtail the five kilometre run to only two.

However, Naren was not too flustered with the development.

''It's one of those things that drivers prefer to do themselves to save time on the stages,'' he said after the race. ''Today's shakedown was a five km stage but we did only two km. We had a bent steering rod, which can be fixed. But the point is that I did not want any damage to the car at this point of time.'' ''The route was not very smooth. We had a couple of good runs to check the setup of the car. The setup will be a representation of what the stages are. Setup is slightly different for this rally and we have new springs in the car. We will leave it like that for the first run tomorrow and see what changes need to be made after that,'' he added.

''There are a few stages which can get rough and a couple of stages are smooth. About 60-70 per cent of the event will be on loose dirt, which will be cut up by the top WRC cars.'' UNI XC AB GC1352