The Hungarian rally-raid season started with a very exciting and really muddy event. The Aqua-Palace Cup had two different tracks, one is 27 km, the other is 40 km long. On Friday the competitors made a superspecial, on Saturday they had 6 selectives, on Sunday 3 selectives on the same tracks but on the other direction.
It’s sure that the accident of Murczin-Bagics will be the moment of the year, not just because of the extremity of it but first of all because how they escaped without any injury! On the second stage of Saturday one kilometer before the finish they run too fast, the car rolled 5 times (!) and hit an electric pylon with the roof. The 3D Proto arrived on the slide and the water started to flow in when suddenly the electric pylon fell down on the car! The co-pilot got a little electric shock because his hand was in the water, but Zsolt Murczin and Róbert Bagics could get out from the car immediately. They were taken to the hospital for an ECG and fortunatly they have no problem after this accident, but the car damaged very much.
Besides this action the event had a lot of exciting moment: huge water crossings, deep muddy tracks, heavy wind, so the comptetitors was taking a really difficult rally. The last year’s champion Balázs Szalay was leading until the morning of Sunday, when he was stocked in a wallew and stayed there for 18 minutes. He had to give up the first place which was taken by Károly Fazekas and a BMW X3. On the second place finished a romanian competitor, Costel Casuneanu with his MPR Mitsubishi Pajero, he was in a big fight until the end for the better place with Erik Korda. Casuneanu had only 50 seconds advantage by the end in front of the Nissan’s pilot. A lot of competitors had to give up the race due to mechanical problems, so all who arrived to the finish had a big smile on his face.
There were 5 entrants in the TH category, and 14 quad and motorbike drivers started also on the Aqua-palace Cup. The two young quad biker girls (Barbara Szabó 23 years old, Kitti Csete 19 years old) could not achive good places, but the father-son pair in the two seats-quad (Polaris IPS) finished on the 7th place. Why does it interesting? The pilot, Miklós Benyó is a former Hungarian cross-country champion and Dakar participant, and his son is only 10 years old!
The next event of the UNIQA Hungarian Cross-country Championship will be the III. Admiral Rábaköz Cup which will be organised together with the Czech, Slovak and Polish Championships, and it will be in addition a CEZ (Central European Zone Cup) event and trucks can also enter.
Official results:
T1
1. Fazekas-Horn 03:17:15
2. Casuneanu-Maurilio +00:01:43
3. Korda-Tóth 00:02:33
4. Szalay-Bunkoczi +00:17:05
5. Lónyai-Garamvölgyi +00:42:51
6. Varga-Hujber +00:54:35
7. Várkonyi-Laklóth +01:54:25
8. Sólyom-Galbács +19:30:05
TH-category
1. Zanyi-Lizán 04:15:55
2. Sebestyén-Herczegh +04:55:25
3. Hangodi-Pocseg +08:35:15
Bike/Quad
1. Fekete László 03:33:20
2. Mészöly Tamás +00:06:25
3. Nagy Bertold +00:07:29
4. Somfai Mátyás +00:10:30
5. Győri László +00:13:53
6. Horváth Lajos +00:18:01
7. Benyó-Benyó +00:27:21
8. Hodola Richard +02:11:57
9. Marczinek Zsolt +03:54:22
10. Szabó Barbara +05:38:43
11. Jánosi Zoltán +07:24:03
