Belgian Rally News

[dupanton]

Omloop van Vlaanderen, 7th round of the Belgian Championship coming up.

Big suprise, Emil Bergkvist will start in a DS3 R5.
Also Wevers (S14 WRC), Van Woensel (Lancer WRC), Kenis (Mini WRC), Ten Brinke, Debackere, Verschueren (Fabia R5), Tanghe (Fiesta R5 (evo?)), De Jongh (DS3 R5 evo), Lefevere (Evo X), Weijs Jr (BMW 130i)...

Should be a nice rally, without the usual Loix vs Princen battle.

[br21]

Few more R5s still possible

[mas-racing]

[dupanton]

Entrylist for the Omloop van Vlaanderen is out, 7th rally of the Belgian championship:
http://www.omloopvanvlaanderen.be/up...2016-08-29.pdf

No suprises anymore, quite a weak entrylist compared to the rest of the season.
Princen is the favorite but there are a lot of potential podium finishers.

Rally starts on Friday with 5 stages, with 14 more stages on Saturday.

[MV Rally]

Short Rally Kasterlee 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wXptMLCk3g

[FullThrottleVids]

Video: Omloop van Vlaanderen 2016 Day 1 --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBro5vzcGiY

miniatuur.jpg

[leighton323]

Emil Bergkvist not really impressing here at Omloop van Vlaanderan. I feel the DS3 R5 isn't the strongest car but I thought more of Bergkvist. Anyone been out at the stages?

[tommeke_B]

Emil Bergkvist not really impressing here at Omloop van Vlaanderan. I feel the DS3 R5 isn't the strongest car but I thought more of Bergkvist. Anyone been out at the stages?

Living only 1km from the nearest stage it's my home event. I've seen Emil 3 times in the wet yesterday and 7 times in the dry today. Yesterday for the first loop everyone was on hard tyres (apart from Van Woensel). No rain was predicted at all, and the weather took everyone by surprise. The first 4 cars started on dry, all others in rain, including Emil. You could see he wasn't confident at all, really hesitating, trying to feel the grip in the braking. On all other stages I've seen him he was quite impressive I must say. Relatively clean driving style, very efficient. Also very fast back on the throttle again in the corner, something I remember from Loeb, who also often looked like he entered a corner a bit slower then the others but then he pushed on the throttle very quickly which made his exit quicker than anyone else's. The stages here are a bit comparable to Ypres, but also not completely. There are many different types of tarmac, some offer much more grips than others, and I think it takes some experience to understand, on recce you can't push it too much. Also in comparison to Ypres these stages are much more blind (thanks to the corn fields, corn is about 2m high right now), also there are more slower technical sections, with medium (and slower) corners, I think. For his performance against other drivers I think you have to put things in perspective. Most of the drivers he competed against would be nowhere in a foreign event, but these are "their" events, they competed in it for like 10 times, so they know every corner and what's behind it. Blind means really blind here, as there's no relationship between the road and nature, like you have in mountains or in forests, everything is flat and the road is... as some people decided it to be. Also the locals know about cutting, they can see how the cuts are going to evolve throughout the day etc. Many things were new for Emil, and also you have to keep in mind that this was only his second event with an R5 car on asphalt (first with DS3). All in all a good performance from him, I'm sure he learned a lot. Now let's hope he can use this experience in the future, hopefully with a quicker and more reliable car..

[mas-racing]

[gianni123]

video omloop van vlaanderen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWThc0LPsjg