The second round of the FIA Cross Country Rallies World Cup has started today with the Super Special of 9.2 Km. Memorial Claudio “Caco” Azzareti.
The Poles Dabrowski and Czachor have set the fastest time in the short but complicated prologue, five seconds behind the Toyota Hilux finished the MINI of Vasiliev and Zhilstov. Malysz and Marton were third ahead of Brazilians Varela and Gugelmin Brazilians. Closing the top 5, the MINI of Kaczmarski and Palmeiro. Again the Hiluxes from Overdrive and X-raid’s MINI are at the top places. The Proto New Line of Gadasin ended sixth despite his V8 engined swallowed water in the Meduna river.
Everyone want to see the new Schlesser team’s proto: one 4X4 with Mercedes V6 Tdi engine, finally Magnaldi sit behind the wheel of the brand new car.
Dabrowski: „This was a nice special but i was shocked by the amount of water. I don’t know how do all the cars pass that. For me it’s surprising.”
Zhiltsov: “For us everything was perfect today. We drove fast, but keep safety, without risk. The difficult places were in fords with water and slippery stones. On Prologue it was OK, but what will be on tomorrow stages we will see, because the track of Leg 2 will include some part of today’s route. We had a good starting position for tomorrow, so we will try to do our best!”.
Gadasin: „It was nice but we had an unusual problem: water got into the engine. We never had the same problem with any engine before, but I think we can fix it for tomorrow.”
Zheludov: „Because of the water we lost power, 100 metres before the finish the car even stopped. We finished 10th and got the 8th start position for tomorrow, we are happy with that. Int he past rallies we had problems with brake system. We modified it, but it’s still not perfect.”
Start order for tomorrow:
1. Alrajhi
2. Vasilyev
3. Varela
4. Dabrowski
5. Malysz
6. Gadasin
7. Kaczmarski
8. Zheludov
9. Zapletal
10. Branco