Italian Baja: Benediktas Vanagas ready for battle
By Stephan Wolf
This year the famous and popular Italian Baja will be a round of three different series - the international FIA European Baja Cup and two national championships, the Italian and Hungarian. There are 71 crews provisionally entries in all categories (both national and international).
Compared to last year, the format of the race has changed a lot. This year the competition program consists of a prologue on Friday and three big special stages on Saturday (or more accurately, three runs of one big SS). In addition, the organizers this week were forced to reduce the competition distance by almost a quarter - it was planned 390 km, it became 295 km.
Benediktas Vanagas (#202, Toyota Hilux T1+, Ultimate): “It’s my fifth time in the Italian Baja. We were really looking for weather conditions and understand that some changes on the track were made because of water in the system. Actually, it’s a bit scary because we just changed engine after Spain (Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura), where we had a hydrolock.
So let’s see how we will perform in this Italian Baja. First day was quite come and easy. We built service area as well as made the admin checks and scrutineering. So we are fully OK now. We need to do some job with engineer who came from Great Britain and supporting us during the race.
A shakedown awaits us on Friday morning, during which we will check out our BlackHawk and check out the local conditions. In the afternoon, a press conference. And in the evening there will be a prologue, after which we will know our starting position for Saturday.
Photo Credits: MCH Photo, teams social media
