Rallye Breslau: Lithuanian Point of View on LEG4
By Stephan Wolf
Thursday was the most difficult and eventful day in the Rallye Breslau program. Firstly, in the morning the longest special stage of the whole race was waiting for the participants — 204.51 km long (in Cross Country category). Secondly, a 59.88km night special stage (even called Leg 4.5) was scheduled for the late evening.
Rytis Juodsnukis, SSV (Rytrama racing): “This is the longest and most challenging day of the race. In the morning we had a really big special stage waiting for us, over 200 kilometres. Our Can-Am is fine, we did well on this large special stage - no technical problems. The team is working great, the vehicle is perfectly prepared. Now we have only one hour to check and prepare our SSV for the night race.
There were several challenging and tough sections on the morning special. Weather also matters - in hot weather we have a lot of dust on the course, and in case of rain we would get a lot of big puddles and boggy places. We did well with the navigational tasks, but still made a couple of small mistakes. Once we couldn’t see the track at all in the dust and went in the wrong direction, but we quickly corrected this mistake”.
Aidas Bubinas, SSV (co-driver Arūnas Lekavičius, Pilėnai Motorsport): “We had a very difficult start to this race. On Monday we lost a lot of time, on Tuesday we started from 107th position (in the joint Cars+SSVs standings) and for the third day in a row we are gradually moving up. Today is a very long and difficult day - long distance, lots of dust, lots of overtaking. And the day is not over yet, there will be one more special stage at night. I am sure this night SS can change a lot of things in the race.
I have started many times at Rallye Breslau, including on the bike - this is probably my seventh participation here. Now we are driving mainly for the fun of it. Maybe we’ll try to win some special stage, but it won’t affect our overall result too much. Whether we finish 30th or 32nd in the overall SSV standings makes no difference”.
Edgaras Simanavičius, SSV (co-driver Arūnas Simanavičius, Asima Racing): “This is the second time we have started at Rallye Breslau. The race has turned out to be various and interesting. At the military training ground in Żagań - a lot of sandy fragments on the track, a lot of dust, a lot of overtaking, a lot of different paths that you cross in all directions. Yesterday was also transit special stage Hannibal - quite fast, with good navigation, brought us a lot of fun.
Today we got our second consecutive marathon day. The big special stage in the morning had lots of narrow paths and lanes with difficult navigation. Now we’re getting ready for the night’s special stage. I think the conditions there will be very difficult too - darkness, dust, again navigational complications. The weather is quite different now than last year - conditions are much drier. A year ago it rained for several days, it rained on the night special stage, it rained at the finish of the race. And this year it is hot, dry, a lot of dust, low visibility - more challenging to navigate, difficult to overtake”.
Albert Veliamovič, SSV (co-driver Marius Damavičius, Team No Stress): “Well, what can I say about today? It was the unluckiest day of the whole race. And we’re really... The race is over for us because we won’t get any results. So now we can just drive for our own enjoyment. What happened was... We broke down on the track and couldn’t continue. We lost a screw. A simple screw that ruined everything for us. The whole Rallye Breslau. It just came loose and fell out. We didn’t have that kind of screw with us. It was very difficult to repair the car. So we went back to the bivouac, we’ll get a lot of penalties and now we’ll just drive for ourselves”.
Photo Credits: RBI Media, teams social media.
