The field of the 22nd HunGarian Baja completed a truly eventful race. Several duos with a chance of victory were caught out by the track, but after a long wait due to protests following the race, the Baja ended with a Kyrgyz victory.
The leading pair changed already after the first track action of the day, the second selective section of the competition. Denis Krotov and Oleg Uperenko took the lead from Benediktas Vanagas and Aisvydas Paliukenas, who started the day in first place. The Lithuanians lost about five minutes on the track because they couldn’t find the right road during the selective stage that covered more than 130 kilometers. Vanagas and Paliukenas finished SS2 with only the seventh fastest time, falling back to third place in the overall standings with a 3 minute 45 second gap.
The other two cars who finished behind Krotov and his team in the top 3 of the stage were of yesterday’s third placed Miroslav Zapletal’s pair, and of yesterday’s fifth placed Grajek Wlodzimierz’s duo. This meant that the former duo also overtook the pair of Vanagas in the overall standings. In SS2, the fourth fastest was the duo of the R-X Sport team, competing with a female navigator, while the best time among the Hungarians was set by Balázs Molnár and Gabriella Molnár behind the wheel of a Can-Am.
Unfortunately, we also had to say goodbye to the first retired pair of the day: Frantisek Brutovsky of Ming Racing Sports, who had a big crash here last year, was unable to start the second selective stage because his navigator complained of feeling unwell in the extreme heat. The Czech pair therefore decided to withdraw from the race. In addition to them, two other cars were unable to finish the section, so there was a total of three duos missing the rest of the HunGarian Baja.
Things took a turn for the worse for Vanagas and his team during SS3, when their car, nicknamed “Black Hawk,” caught fire on the track. The fire was quickly extinguished at the scene, but this meant the end of the race for the Lithuanian pair, as they were unable to start SS4 with their damaged car. This meant that Krotov and his team could continue Saturday with peace of mind, as not only had one of their main rivals dropped out, but they also won the third selective stage, giving them a comfortable four-minute lead in the overall standings. Grajek and his team finished the third selective stage in second place, followed by Zapletal and his team, but the latter pair was still ahead of the Poles in the overall standings.
Among the Hungarians, Csucsu and Márk Mesterházi had an excellent stage, recording the sixth fastest time in SS3. However, the father-son pair of the Trébitsch family was much less fortunate, as they were also forced to retire from the race during the stage. With them, there were already five retirements in the FIA field with one stage to go.
The final selective stage also claimed its victims, and it wasn’t just anyone who ended the race prematurely. Before SS4, the Zapletal-Sykora duo, who were in second place overall, had a problem with the steering at the start of the stage, so they couldn’t even finish it, completely ruining their chances of victory.
Krotov and his team also encountered difficulties. Their victory had seemed certain for a long time, but in the end they lost a lot of time on SS4 due to damage to the left rear wheel. The Kyrgyz pair then learned at the finish line that they had lost first place by 27 seconds. It seemed that Wlodzimierz Grajek and Michal Goleniewski, who completed a perfect selective stage in their Toyota Hilux, had won the 22nd HunGarian Baja. Their performance was particularly commendable, as they completed SS4 in nearly 40-degree heat without air conditioning.
This was followed by a long wait as the race organizers reviewed the protests and possible penalties. In the end, based on the official final results, Krotov and his team were able to retain their victory thanks to their protest for a deduction from their total time, because of an event that happened in an earlier stage.
The thoughts of the winner: „We finished the Hungarian Baja, it was my first time participating in it. I really enjoyed it, although today was very tough. Three special stages of 130 kilometers each. It was very hot, and the air conditioning in our car didn’t work very well. Otherwise, the rally wasn’t too difficult, but the tracks were very interesting.”
„Overall, everything was good, I liked it a lot. The only problem was that on today’s final special stage, at the 50th kilometer, a suspension broke and then the driveshaft failed. So we had to drive slowly, but we decided to finish — and we did. This is our second victory with the petrol MINI; we had also won the Qatar Baja with it. Many thanks to the X-raid team, my co-driver, and the organizers.”
Finally, third place in the overall standings went to Dutch duo Paul Spierings and Mark Salomons in a Taurus T3 car – they reached the bottom step of the podium thanks to their excellent performance in SS4. The duo of Csucsu also excelled in the fourth selective stage, finishing in an impressive fifth place overall with their new car, making them the best Hungarian pair at the HunGarian Baja.
As for the categories, Krotov and his team naturally won the Ultimate category, Spierings and his team triumphed among the Challengers, while Hamed Al Wahaibi and his team won the SSV battle.
The Hungarian national race – organized within the HunGarian Baja itself – was won by the duo of Zoltán Garamvölgyi and Antal Takács, followed by Karel Trneny and Vaclav Pritzl, then Norbert Németh and Pálma Németh. Garamvölgyi and his team also won their category, T4NAT. It is worth mentioning that the driver was able to claim victory after 22 years of managing the HunGarian Baja as its main organizer, competing as a driver for the first time after so many years. After their category victory, the Garilla Racing drivers said that they found the track extremely difficult and technical, and that they had completed the stage of their lives.
Source: Hungarian Baja
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