Rallye Breslau: Lithuanian Point of View on LEG5
By Stephan Wolf
As usual, Rallye Breslau offers participants a number of different challenges and adventures every day - surprises can be waiting at any moment and anywhere. The Lithuanian participants tell us about it…
Rytis Juodsnukis, SSV (Rytrama racing): “Last night’s night special stage was really, really good. It was probably the second time in my life I’ve ever driven a race at night. It was an impressive, interesting, fast and a bit crazy route. And really complicated to navigate. As usual, things were made very difficult by the dust - there was really a lot of it, despite the light rain during the night. And what made us most happy was that even in such conditions we finished fourth!
In my opinion, it was today’s special stage that was the most difficult on this Rallye Breslau. More than 180 km of competition distance, with no neutralization zones. It was very hard physically. Today’s special stage is the most non-standard and the most “irregular” in this race. And we immediately began to have various small problems - first we were late for the start in the morning, we started to get nervous. We started to make small navigational errors, which gradually accumulated over the whole course. The main thing is that we finished today without any really serious problems. Now we have the final day tomorrow”.
Arūnas Gelažninkas, SSV (co-driver Emilija Gelažninkienė, Rentway Dakar team): “This is the third time my wife Emilija and I have started together at Rallye Breslau. As in 2022–2023, we participate in the SSV category. And now we intend to fight for a podium finish if possible - last year we finished eighth. Yesterday was a very challenging, long and intensive day. On the morning special stage we were fifth in our category. The night SS was not as good as we would have liked, but still finished in the top 10.
A long, challenging and fast special stage awaited us today. And our result was great - if I’m not mistaken, we finished third on this SS, and we are also in third position in the overall SSV standings. Tomorrow we need to stay calm and avoid serious problems. In racing you never know what can happen tomorrow. For example, today after finishing the special stage we returned to the bivouac and found that the suspension spring had broken. And no one has this spare part. We had to buy a new suspension spring and completely changed both front suspensions on our Can-Am. We’re looking forward to tomorrow’s final”.
Mindaugas Povilaitis, Cross Country Car Open (Toyota Hilux): “Yes, we had an adventure today when we got stuck in the mud at the very beginning of the special stage. We even thought the race was over for us. Luckily, we were rescued and pulled out onto the track. A lot of good fortune for us. Last year on the local routes during Baja Poland, one Toyota Hilux Overdrive got stuck until the end of… We had a good night special stage yesterday and won it. Today we did well too, even with that incident at the beginning. Now our mechanics are cleaning the clutch on the Toyota (consequences of the “visit” in the bog)”.
Albert Veliamovič, SSV (co-driver Marius Damavičius, Team No Stress): “What can I say now? A very long day, a 180km special stage without any stops from start to finish. Yesterday morning we were seventh in the overall SSV standings, but a breakdown killed all our chances for a high result. So today we rode just for fun, the final result didn’t matter. Now there is only the final special tomorrow. We will try to have fun for the last time and go home to our families”.
Photo Credits: RBI Media, teams social media
