This past weekend inaugural event of Polish Rally Championship took place in the beautiful surroundings of Owl Mountains in lower Silesia. The legendary Rajd Świdnicki also known as “Elmot” saw 53 drivers meet at the starting line.
Spectators could admire five R5 class cars, 5 open N class cars (4×4) and several FWD cars competing in R3, R2 and open 2WD. The show was even more colorful due to parallel historic race cars rally with such beauties as Audi Quattro A2.
Rally consists of twelve stages that take place during a three day course. Seven special stages ended in Walim. All teams were put up to the test with extreme weather conditions. Third week of April is pretty unusual to be seen with snow and temperatures close to 1oC. It was a huge challenge to prepare for the rare conditions as according the the rules if the race is not considered winter you are not allowed to use studded tires. Lots of spy teams got stuck but fortunately it got better just before the race and all teams had clear roads for the race.
On the very first day only one special stage took place in the streets of city Swidnica. Marcin Gagacki driving Skoda R5 was the fastest driver followed closely by Nivette and Butvilas, however the real racing started on day 2. Filip Nivette showed great pace from the begining, but couldn’t avoid problems, damaging his suspension on SS3 losing almost 25s. This allowed Zbyszek Gabryś to drive his Ford Fiesta R5 to the top of classification at the end of day 2 beating Nivette by 22,6s and Gagacki by 25s.
Day 3 belonged to Nivette who won all Sunday special stages including power stage by over the minute finishing rally 38,9s ahead of Gabrys. Tomasz Kasperczyk finished third beating both Gagacki and Butvilas.
Open N class win belonged to Hubert Maj in Ford Fiesta Proto who beat both Subaru Polish Rally Team drivers Miko Marczyk and Marcin Słobodzian by just a few seconds. 2WD saw tight competition with Jakub Colin Brzeziński in Citroen DS3 R3T getting first to the finish line, however the late penalty handed the win to Jan Chmielewski in BMW Maxi Proto. Colin’s great pace gives high hopes for the coming WRC round. Historic Rally was won by Artur Rowiński driving 500HP Audi Quattro who presented the speed similar to top 10 drivers.
It was great to see a lot of amazing spectators during the rally. The energy was awesome and we hope to see more in the future. Get the feeling of Rally Krause and check out some onboard action from Miko Marczyk driving his Open N Subaru Impreza STI.
photo Maciej Niechwiadowicz