Filipe Campos kept his first place
Filipe Campos (BMW X3CC), the only leader so far of the Rally TT Vodafone Estoril-Portimão-Marrakech, kept his first place after the fifth day of the third round of Cross Country Rally World Cup. The Porto’s driver managed to hold the more predictable attack Leonid Novitskiy (BMW X3CC) in the second stage held in Morocco (Rachidia Er/Er Rachidia, with 338.4 km) and will start tomorrow’s Erfourd stage as the fastest driver of the race organized by Automóvel Club de Portugal.
“It was a different day than I’m used to. No references, no times information along the route. Only at the end is that he knew if we had been good or bad! We are left to ourselves and this is a great challenge. In terms of navigation all went well and I took Novitskiy trails, thinking if he was able to pass, so do I. Only when I reached the first dune – a really wall! – I was not so sure if I would be able to cross it… But here I am at the arrival.”
With two wins in stages so far, both in Morocco, Novitskiy still attacks the first place, seeing the difference to the BMW “colleague” decreasing every day. “Today things were going well, but I had a puncture at Km 100, having to stop to change the wheel and I lost a few minutes, so our difference in the end could be much higher,” said the Russian.
Keeping a tune very well balanced, Ricardo Leal dos Santos/Paulo Fiuza were fourth at the passage of both check controls, a position he held at the end of the day, at Er Rachidia and will occupy the third position, climbing one place in the classification: “One really Dakar stage, with many stones, ditches and sand dunes. Once there, the problem is with the tires because as we cannot take out much air from the tires as we risk to have a puncture in the rocky places. Everything went well in a typically African stage”, said Coimbra’s driver.
Just behind Eric Vigouroux had a stage without any problem, so it is barely three minutes of the podium. “Today was a good day, no problems at Chevrolet and accurate navigation. A nice stage.”
- 1st – Filipe Campos / Jaime Baptista – BMW X3CC – 13h03m59s
- 2nd – Leonid Novitskiy / Andreas Schulz – BMW X3CC – at 6m44s
- 3rd – Ricardo Leal dos Santos / Paulo Fiuza – BMW X5 – at 54m35s
- 4th – Eric Vigouroux / Alex Winocq – Chevrolet Silverado – at 57m02s
- 5th – Hélder Oliveira / José Marques – Nissan Pathfinder – at 1h26m34s
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- Victory for Leonid Novitskiy and BMW X3CC
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This post was compiled by Smoerbrod
