Problems for Garland D-MAX during third leg | Safari Day 4

Garland, Di Lallo hit trouble in leg 3 of Australasian Safari.

Isuzu Motorsports had a troubled run during the third leg of the Australasian Safari desert rally, with the podium contending D-MAX of Bruce Garland and Harry Suzuki grinding to a halt during the day's first stage.

Garland said the D-MAX was performing well when the high-performance vehicle suddenly lost power.

"We were going gangbusters, but not driving overly hard, when the D-MAX just came to a halt," he said.

"It was like someone had turned off the ignition. Harry and I crawled all over it, but despite the fact we are pretty good bush mechanics there was nothing we could do. We had to get towed in."

Isuzu teammates Adrian Di Lallo and Roger Pedersen also encountered problems during the day's tough stages, with their production-class MU-X suffering damage from hitting a creek too quickly and rolling.

The accident removed all the communications and GPS monitoring equipment, with Roger Pedersen saying the racing gods were smiling on them.

"In hindsight, it was probably to our advantage that we lost the terratrip and communications because it made us back off a bit," he said.

"The car is going great, considering what we put her through. There’s really not much work to do on it tonight."

With Garland and Suzuki not completing the day, Di Lallo and Pedersen now find themselves in sixth outright, although they are now over an hour from the race leading Holden VF of Steve Riley and John Doble.

Isuzu Motorsports Thailand's entry of a production-class D-MAX driven by OLan Sornsirirat and Veerachai Thorangkoon managed to steer clear of all the trouble and finished the day in 11th outright, 2.5 hours behind class leader Di Lallo.

Wednesday's stages will see the field leave Gascoyne Junction and head towards the coastal town of Exmouth. On the way are two competitive stages: 212km at Williambury and 108km at Winning.