Belgian Rally News

**dimviii** · 14th March 2015, 11:59

impressed about Princen.

**HaCo** · 14th March 2015, 13:21

Originally Posted by Mirek

Great battle between Loix and Princen

Not at all unfortunately. Princen was too late at the start this morning, you need to add 1440 to his time :-( Loix should not be pushing.

Are we sure the Skoda R5 will be faster than the S2000?

**Mirek** · 14th March 2015, 13:49

Originally Posted by HaCo

Are we sure the Skoda R5 will be faster than the S2000?

I bet it will.

**Fly** · 14th March 2015, 18:36

Originally Posted by HaCo

Excellent spot at ss9:
https://flic.kr/p/ri7fL6

On ss7 junior winner from Haspengouw went off quite hard. Don't know if they continued the stage after.

You were standing next to me and I didn't know it. You can see my dad and a friend in red on the picture.
You're right, it was a good spot.

**MartijnS** · 14th March 2015, 19:52

We were there too at ss9

Back on our way home, pretty good day despite the delays and lot of retirements.

**HaCo** · 14th March 2015, 21:57

Fly, I was sitting in my chair :-)

I think the last stage we did, SS19, was on time lol

It was a great weekend, nice to see top drivers attacking! Also juniors Bucx an Dececco did a great job!

**Mirek** · 14th March 2015, 22:17

Since a lot of R5 this time retired with mechanical problems and only three finished I'd like to ask if anybody knows exactly what happened to them? Tsjoen, Casier, Verschueren, Grooten?

**HaCo** · 14th March 2015, 22:19

Damn, just reading why Verschueren and Van Parijs were excluded. Apparently they added a quite hidden checkpoint between the finish and start of 2 stages. Loix almost missed it as well, just saw the 0 passing it.
Shouldn't this be mentioned in the roadbook?
Van Woensel admits he was doing an illegal recce on ss2 to check the finish, apparently the organization added a chicane to the finish line (over a very tight bridge). So he agrees with the 3 minutes penalty, but the nominal times he got were way to high. One of the last stages he got a nominal time he got more than one minute more!

The region is awesome, but the delays and all the actions that were taken are not worth a Belgian championship :-(

**HaCo** · 14th March 2015, 22:25

Originally Posted by Mirek

Since a lot of R5 this time retired with mechanical problems and only three finished I'd like to ask if anybody knows exactly what happened to them? Tsjoen, Casier, Verschueren, Grooten?

Casier hit something and broke a steering arm.
Tsjoen had an off, I heard he complained about the rear end handling of his DS3, it is too loose (since Haspengouw apparently)
Verschueren excluded. But did break another drive shaft on day 1, had to do the second run of Clementine with fwd, I think he had this problem in previous rally as well.
Grooten, I heard he had a puncture, not sure.
Princen had to replace gearbox, why he got 1min40 penalty time.

Quite ok for R5 reputation ;-)