Yamato holds his own during one or two flashes of light and one or two violent shudders of the cave -- it's when both come at the same time, a flash of light bright enough to momentarily blind him, and a sharp shaking of the cave, that he's in trouble.

He just barely avoids a pillar of rock, a shower of sparks flying from the hull of his ship as he skates across it. The force of it nearly sends him careening into the nearby cave wall, and it takes all of his skills to control the ship enough not to crash straight into it, instead scraping one wing over the wall with another shower of sparks.

It all only takes maybe two seconds at most, and then he's back in control, zooming ahead through the caves, but that's still enough time for the fourth place ship to put some distance between them.