Italian Baja 2014. Prologue
Friday, 14 March 2014 22:36
The bright sun of Italy was blinding the lenses of photographers who tried to capture the beautiful, yet clean race cars on the start podium ...
The nine FIA priority list drivers opened the prologue of Italian Baja 2014. The Super Special was only 9.2 km long. Such a short distance for a cross country selective stage turned out not so easy. Frods and various turns were pointed out in the Road Book, and there were some more interesting surprises. But have a look at the results for the first ten - the gaps are several seconds!
place |
start No |
crew |
result |
gap |
1. |
205 |
M. DABROWSKI/J. CZACHOR |
8'02.6 |
|
2. |
202 |
V. VASILYEV/ K. ZHILTSOV |
8'07.8 |
5.2 |
3. |
215 |
A. MALYSZ/R. MARTON |
8'09.2 |
6.6 |
4. |
200 |
R. VARELA/G. GUGELMIN |
8'12.7 |
10.1 |
5. |
206 |
B. GADASIN/A. KUZMICH |
8'13.8 |
11.2 |
6. |
203 |
M. KACZMARSKI/F. PALMEIRO |
8'13.9 |
11.3 |
7. |
201 |
Y. ALRAJHI/T. GOTTSCHALK |
8'16.1 |
13.5 |
8. |
207 |
M. ZAPLETAL/M. MARTON |
8'34.0 |
31.4 |
9. |
221 |
R. BRANCO/J. SERODIO |
8'36.9 |
34.3 |
10. |
208 |
A. ZHELUDOV/O. TYUPENKIN |
8'38.1 |
35.5 |
Our crew shares their impressions of the day.
Alexey Kuzmich: A very narrow track, many undescribed positions which were impossible to describe, so I had to work with terratrip with a lot of precision. We were especially unsettled by a very narrow and twisted part of the track with bushes and with puddles. Eventually in such a place we blinded drove into a bump and precariously tilted to the left. Boris managed, straightened out the car, cut a little bush and went on. A lot of river crossings, one was very long with a left turn where quite some water splashed onto me and wet the seat and the overalls.
Boris Gadasin: Today’s prologue went quite well and easy. In the beginning I was playing it too safe stategically. Then we began to gradually accelerate but on kilometer 3-4 we already encountered water. And all of a sudden we were unpleasantly surprised as water got inside the engine, the engine misfired – we never had this problem, neither with V8 nor with V10. One of electric connectors leaks water. We will fix it now. I am glad we found this during the prologue. I think we lost about 10-15 seconds – once we even almost stuck in water. So, not a big loss. We will be able to win it all back tomorrow. In total, all is good, the car’s perfomance is excellent apart from the problem with the water.
After choosing start lines for the next leg the first driver to enter the SS2 will be Y. Alrajhi. Today's winner M. Dabrowsky will start forth, and Boris Gadasin the sixth.
The competitors will get up quite early tomorrow, the first car should enter the refuelling area at 7:50 local time. Due to the weather conditions the route for the day was changed a bit. The cars will face the Selective Section “Pasch” (44 km from Cordenons to Tauriano), and tackle it three times (at 8.30am, 12.30pm and 3.30pm); than it will be the turn of the Selective Section “Cosa” (19 km from Cosa to Ponte della Delizia), to be repeated twice (at 9.20am and 1.20pm). The laps will be divided by a 2-hour service and a regrouping procedure.
The official site: www.italianbaja.it
Live results: rally.ficr.it
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