Rallye Breslau: Lithuanian Point of View on LEG3
By Stephan Wolf
The travel from Żagań to Drawsko Pomorskie, with two different special stages during the day, brought many adventures to all participants of Rallye Breslau.
Rytis Juodsnukis, SSV (Rytrama racing): “We’ve finished, now we can talk more about today. As you know, yesterday we lost a lot of time, we used the whole time limit on the distance. So today we started somewhere around 55th in the SSV category. The morning special stage Żagań was a very difficult trial for us — we had to overtake slower competitors all the time. But in these conditions my co-driver Aurimas worked perfectly, we finished close to the Top 20 in our category.
There was no regrouping before today’s second special stage, so we started again in distant positions. In Drawsko we decided to increase the speed a bit and improved our morning result. There were no technical problems, our Maverick is in good condition, so our mechanics will not have a lot of work today. There were no problems with navigation, we lost only a couple of minutes when we stopped and checked our location. There was only one incident when we got stuck briefly in a narrow part of the track. Very happy for the other crews from Lithuania who had great success today - several guys finished in the Top 10 at once!”
Aivaras Kavaliauskas, SSV (BRO Racing Team): “This year, together with Ernestas Česokas, we are racing on a Can-Am Maverick X3 with the number 450. This is the second start for me at Rallye Breslau - three years ago I participated here in a completely different vehicle, a big Hummer. Today’s stage was really challenging - a long journey from Żagań to Drawsko Pomorskie, two special stages 135 km and 50 km long. It was a serious challenge for everyone.
I really like the special stages in Drawsko Pomorskie - they are fast, exciting and unpredictable. I like this region a lot - ever since I participated in Baja Poland here. I really like the special stages in Drawsko Pomorskie - they are fast, exciting and unpredictable. I like this region a lot - ever since I participated in Baja Poland here. Today our visit to Drawsko was adventurous - we broke a driveshaft, but we still finished the race. According to the preliminary results we are now in the Top 10 of the overall standings - that’s very satisfactory!”
Albert Veliamovič, SSV (co-driver Marius Damavičius, Team No Stress): “Probably for us today’s leg was not as successful as for other Lithuanian participants. Everything was good on the morning special stage — we drove about 130–140 km on it, if I am not mistaken. But in the afternoon it was much more difficult.
In the afternoon we had a 200 km transfer and arrived in my favorite Drawsko Pomorskie, where I constantly make navigational mistakes. And today I didn’t change my tradition - already 700 meters after the start I made a mistake and we lost about three minutes. There are three more days of the race ahead, I hope that I will be able to improve my navigation skills. And actually it was fun in Drawsko - lots of big puddles on the track, we all had a good swim in the mud”.
Slavomir Volkov, CC Car Open (co-driver Mindaugas Povilaitis): “We finished, arrived at our new bivouac and are now preparing to fight tomorrow on the second marathon leg. As you can see by our car, we had a good swim in the mud today. We finished, arrived at our new bivouac and are now preparing to fight tomorrow on the second marathon leg. As you can see by our car, we had a good swim in the mud today. The first special stage today was near the old bivouac in Żagań - we did well there, the navigation was excellent.
On the second special stage in Drawsko there were some difficulties in the roadbook, but they did not prevent us from finishing. So we are satisfied, everything is great. However, our car has already started to have some strange problems, but so far it is working well. We hope that we can fix these problems. A lot of water and mud on the highway, everyone has already had a proper swim. But we are lucky with the weather so far this year, warm and quite dry. Usually after the rains there are a lot of boggy fragments here”.
Photo Credits: RBI Media, teams social media
