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Rally do Jalapão 2023: With its Brazil debut, X Rally Team promises to "hunt the monster" from Jalapão with his new Hunter car
The team from São Paulo will race for the first time in the home country with the Prodrive Hunter T1+ in search of continuing with the development of the cars and adaptation for the Sertões contest in August.
The X Rally Team team will compete, from this Tuesday (20) until Saturday (24), the Jalapão Rally, the third stage of the Brazilian Rally Cross Country Championship. And it is in the race disputed within the state of Tocantins that the five-time champion team of the Sertões will promote the debut of the Prodrive Hunter T1+, with which the duo formed by Cristian Baumgart and Beco Andreotti, and Marcos Baumhart and Kleber Cincea, played a stage of the World Cup in Mexico in April.
It will be the second chance for the longest-lived duo in the history of the Brazilian rally, with cars produced in England, who won nine of the 14 Dakar Specials in 2023.
"I’ve been riding motorcycles and cars. It’s always been a good opportunity, and now with the new car, I hope it’s even better. Of course, it’s a lot of new things for the team, a different terrain, so there’s still a lot to do with our adaptation with the car and the car with the conditions to race in Brazil. It’s going to be a big test, and I hope Jalapão teaches us much more than he has taught us all this time. I like this place too much, and every time we are here, the results are positive," says Marcos Baumgart, who won the Jalapão Rally on three occasions – one on a motorcycle and two by car. He was last year's winner, when he had Beco Andreotti as navigator at his side.
Just like his brother, Cristian Baumgart points out that the period is one of adjustment and "acclimatization" of the car to the Brazilian climate and terrain. However, it looks ahead with the debut of the cars right in Tocantins. "Jalapão has all this mysticism around him, especially because in the years that Sertões passed here, he was always in marathon stages, where there could not be maintenance of the teams. The number of breaks was greater. That’s why the myth that the ‘Jalapão Monster’ is a rally car-eating monster," entertains Cristian. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. But now, to ensure, we have brought the hunters to this monster," said the fourth champion of the Sertões, making the swing with the translation of the car’s name, the Hunter T1+.
In its structure, the X Rally Team team aligns with six more crews among the cars. In the FIA T1 class are the duo Dan Nacif/Fred Buditkievitz and Gunter Hinkelmann/Daniel Spolidoro; in the T1 FIA Brazil, the team brings Pedro Prado/Josi Koerich, Rodrigo Ache/Luís Felipe Eckel, José Silmar Nogueira/Alisson Antunes, and Adroaldo ‘Major’ Weisheimer/Breno Resende, all with the X Rally Rangers produced at the team’s headquarters in São Paulo.
The race will have a total of almost 1,280 kilometers in four days, with the stages adding 843 kilometers of timed stretches. The program starts on Tuesday (20) with the prologue dispute that will define the starting order of cars, motorcycles and UTVs. On Wednesday (21), the caravan leaves the capital Palmas towards the heart of Jalapão, in the city of Mateiros, to make a two-stage stop at São Félix do Tocantins; then, on Saturday (24), the return to Palmas.
The X Rally Team team is sponsored by Vedacit, Motul, BF Goodrich and Rodobens.
Automatic translation
Source X-Rally Team
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