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This weekend’s 38th Baja Portalegre 500 will be the last of the European rounds of the 2024 World Baja Cup before teams head to the Middle East for the final three events in the championship in Qatar, Jordan and Dubai.
The three-day event is based out of the Portalegre municipality in the Alentejo region of eastern Portugal and has attracted a field of 74 vehicles. Twenty-one crews will compete in the Ultimate, category, 39 in Challenger and 14 in SSV.
Somewhat surprisingly, only 12 are registered for the FIA World Baja Cup with just one entrant in Ultimate competing for championship points against five in Challenger and six in SSV. The remainder of the field are mainly focusing on the Portuguese Off-Road Championship.
The Portuguese pairing of João Ferreira and Filipe Palmeiro are the only crew registered for points in the Ultimate category in a series where coefficients come into play with points scoring and front-runners in both the Challenger and SSV sections can also compete for the overall FIA World Baja Cup title.
While Ferreira aims to extend his 25-point advantage over the absent Yazeed Al-Rajhi in the Ultimate category, he is also chasing the overall title in his X-Raid Mini JCW Rally Plus. The Portuguese currently holds second place in the standings, 20 points behind the Spaniard Fernando Alvarez, who is also the leader of the SSV category in his South Racing Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR. Palmeiro leads Alvarez’s French co-driver Xavier Panseri by a similar margin in the Co-drivers’ Championship.
Although not registered for the FIA World Baja Cup, a host of Portuguese drivers will be chasing outright victory in Portugal. They include João Ramos, Francisco Barreto and Luis Recuenco in their Toyotas, the Ford duo of Edgar Condenso and Lino Carapeta and Alejandro Martins in a second X-Raid Mini.
Martinez holds slender Challenger lead over De Mévius
Argentina’s Diego Martinez is fourth in the general classification for the FIA World Baja Cup and leads the Challenger category by just four points in his South Racing Can-Am.
Belgian Ghislain de Mévius (G Rally Team OT3) is his closest challenger and the duo will lock horns in Portugal with the likes of Spaniard Eduardo Pons and Emirati Khalid Al-Jafla in close attention in their Taurus T3 Max machines. Santag Racing’s João Dias has also registered his Can-Am for FIA points.
Martinez’s Uruguayan co-driver Sergio Lafuente has a similar four-point cushion over Johan Jalet in the Co-drivers’ Championship with Spaniard Jaume Betriu 11 points adrift in third.
The rest of the bumper Challenger field is made up of nearly all Portuguese drivers. The list of crews includes Alexandre Pinto, the Santag Racing trio of Armindo Araújo, Marco Pereira and Otávio Leite, Miguel Barbosa, Edgar Reis and South Racing’s Alexander Ré.
Alvarez aims for FIA World Baja Cup and SSV double
Fernando Alvarez is chasing outright victory in the FIA World Baja Cup and also SSV success. He currently holds a 35-point lead over Miguel Toril in the SSV Drivers’ Championship and a cushion of 57 points over the Spaniard’s brother Alex in the second of the Escuderia JMP Racing Can-Ams. Miguel Toril is also third in the FIA World Baja Cup’s Drivers’ Championship.
Quaddy Racing’s Amerigo Ventura and Erika Mingozzi (Yamaha) are registered for points along with the Saudi driver Ibrahim Al-Muhanna and his Emirati navigator Hassan Ali Obaid (Can-Am) and Santag Racing’s Rui Serpa and his co-driver Rui Pita. Xavier Panseri has a massive 67-point cushion over Alex Toril’s sidekick Pedro Lopez in the SSV Co-drivers’ Championship.
Meanwhile, the South Racing Can-Am Team is currently 51 points ahead of the absent Overdrive Racing in the Teams’ Championship and 75 clear of Escuderia JMP Racing.
Action gets underway with a 3.77km Prologue at Coutadas on Friday (October 18th). This will decide the running order for the afternoon’s opening 70.87km stage that runs from Ponte de Sor to Crato.
The majority of the competitive action takes place on Saturday (October 19th) with passes through two demanding stages of 166.78km and 166.20km along narrow rural Portuguese tracks between Ponte de Sor and Herdade das Coutades. Inclement weather conditions can completely alter the nature of the terrain.
In a route of 638.01km, 407.62km will be timed against the clock.
Source: FIA
Photo: Rally-Raid Network / ImagensDesportivas.pt
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