Belgian Rally News

[Tom206wrc]

Pitty all these problems on the R5s by PSA once again


Fantastic results by Gino Bux and Cédric de Cecco

[tommeke_B]

Coming back to retirement of Grooten. He had a puncture, replaced the wheel, later in the same loop he punctured again. He had to do a stage almost completely on the wheel. When he was going to service, maybe 500m from Service In, the wheel broke... Anyway I'm a bit disappointed by his performance in Spa as well, expected something better from him.

Seen a great event, beautiful fast stages. A lot of variety, on places you had open fields and could follow the cars for kilometers. On a place we could already see the next car coming before the previous one disappeared. Other places are in forest. Some roads are wide, some extremely narrow, bumpy/flat, gravel, uphill, downhill, everything is in it. A few parts were similar to what you can find in Barum Rally. Some gravel parts were too brutal in my opinion.Also the itinerary allowed you to see a lot of stages (we did 4 on friday night, 8 on saturday), if you didn't mind driving a lot.



Competition-wise this wasn't a good event. Some great battles, that's what we had. Freddy Loix in huge battle with Princen, before Princen got the penalty. I hope Princen can improve a bit more for when Loix will have the Fabia R5, because it will be quicker, probably only a few seconds on each stage. The organizers failed in every aspect. Chris Van Woensel (Lancer WRC) decided to stop after he lost some 3 minutes due to notional times for stages he couldn't drive because of accidents. With his WRC car he was starting behind the first R2 cars... Verschueren, Vanparijs and some others were excluded for missing some time control. A time control which Freddy Loix would have missed if he didn't see the 0-car stopping there in front of him!... Many things went wrong, leading to even more retirements than you usually have, but ok... Let's hope RACB will do something about it, but I expect nothing.

[MartijnS]

Nice shot!

My photos are also online







More at our Facebook Page or our Website !

Joost his video also online already:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGt9Euv1qWc

[Mirek]

Tommeke: Those 3 minutes for Van Woensel are not a notional time. They are a penalty acc. to Article 20.2. That's written on the result page. I have no idea what it is in Your national regulations but somebody here wrote something about illegal recce of SS2.

[HaCo]

Tommeke: Those 3 minutes for Van Woensel are not a notional time. They are a penalty acc. to Article 20.2. That's written on the result page. I have no idea what it is in Your national regulations but somebody here wrote something about illegal recce of SS2.

Mirek,
He actually got a penalty for illegal recce, but also got several times really bad notional times.

[tommeke_B]

Yes. These drivers got 3min penalty: Snijers, Van Woensel, Bonjean, Bouvy and Claerhout. They were all caught on the same stage (SS2/5) on friday morning. It's worth mentioning that official recce is always the weekend before the event, and organizers have put some hay bales on this stage that weren't mentioned in the roadbook, logically, drivers notes weren't correct. I would be very surprised if they were the only drivers who had a look at the stage on friday. It would be better if organizers check on illegal recce longer before the event. What I like is that the organizers give a time penalty in stead of a financial penalty. Last years sometimes there were penalties, but for some drivers 500 euros penalty isn't a big deal...

Both Van Woensel and Hermann stopped after SS8. On SS4 they got +36,7s. On SS6 1m04,6s. On SS7 +54,8s. It's normal they didn't agree on this, in normal conditions Van Woensel would lose maybe 20s on these stages together...

[Mirek]

Thanks

[tommeke_B]

http://sporza.be/cm/sporza/videozone...lend/1.2271748 Amazing onboard with Freddy Loix on SS Clémentine 1, it's incredible how they do it, also big respect for the codriver! The stage was delayed by 45mins which caused it to be run in almost dark, and almost no drivers had their big light pods on. Somewhere after 4mins the most interesting part starts, from there to the finish it's all gravel, and they are driving with tarmac set-up. This year it was dry and then it's quite compact gravel, the grip level is quite high. You hear Freddy talking and saying many things like "a fond", "couperen" etc, those are things in notes that must change or that have to be added for the second loop. Also interesting to hear at the finish that he thinks he didn't do a good stage...

[tommeke_B]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgfSt5EemG8 Lucky moment for a spectator when Florian Gonon lost his wheel...

[mas-racing]