Last two posts moved.
Printable View
Last two posts moved.
Allready announced. Pedro Meireles / Mário Castro
https://scontent.fopo3-1.fna.fbcdn.n...e7&oe=5CD6E349
It’s great to see Hyundai Portugal building up their presence on the national series; Magalhães runing alongside Araújo will be an amazing boost for the CPR! Still hoping that Magalhães can also manage to do some ERC events and Carlos Vieira will fully recover from last year crash; he’ll certainly be missed at the season start.
Btw, autosport.pt has made a piece about this year CPR expected drivers:
Fabia: Ricardo Teodósio; Miguel Barbosa; João Barros; Pedro Almeida; António Dias; Joaquim Alves; Diogo Salvi.
i20: Armindo Araújo; Bruno Magalhães; Manuel Castro.
Polo: Pedro Meireles; Paulo Meireles.
C3: José Pedro Fontes.
Fiesta: Miguel Correia.
Many of the mentioned drivers are already confirmed for the whole season or just for some events and others out of that list can also join, like Ricardo Moura, Alexandre Camacho or Miguel Campos; yep, 2019 is starting to look fabulous for the Portuguese Rally Championship!
I was watching the list of drivers and I must add one thing - where are young drivers?
Well, Miguel Correia and Pedro Almeida are young.
Yep, Almeida is only 21 and already run last year on a Fiesta R5, showing a promising pace; Correia is not that young (27), but he was last year CPR revelation (IMO): after a first (and sole) experience on a regional rally in 2017, he run the whole ’18 season on a Clio R3, managing to win the 2wd class in a couple of events and be the class P3 at the end of the season. Not in the list, but hopeffuly in some events besides their local rally, there’s also Pedro Paixão (24) from Madeira and Luis Rego (28) from Açores.
For sure it’d be great to have more young drivers on the CPR main class, like some of the 208 Cup stars, but the brands are still betting on the more experienced guys.
Paixao was big surprise for me on Algarve, but he didnt finished. And he didnt do so many events out of Madeira... Miguel Correia I have seen on Azores and Algarve and he didnt impressed me. Maybe bit too early for him to R5 now. Regarding Pedro Almeida, I didnt know he is so young. Again I have seen him in Azores and Algarve and on both events he was, lets say, average. He was enjoying to drive R5 car, sliding a lot, sometimes too much aggressive, but not so fast. Luis Rego is good, I follow him for many years, but he is doing only rallies on Azores...
Actualy we’re hoping to see Rego on the national series this year, as usually the Açores champ is backed by the local government to rally in the mainland.
Btw, I’ve seen the other 3 doing their debut on gravel, last year at Fafe, and they were all struggling a bit, although Correira looked more at ease than the others. Througth the year they all improved and at Amarante I got surprised by the pace of Almeida (P6, on a close figth with Gago and Meireles) and Correia (only beaten by Sousa on the 2wd class); both, alongside Paixão, deserve the fans attention during 2019. Fingers crossed for them!
Magalhães first test in the i20. Video by Rosmanao: https://youtu.be/PQVbElnqEOk
Pedro Meireles testing the Polo. Rosmanao video: https://youtu.be/9j3D_W-8Kkg?t=18