Baja do Pinhal 2020: Risk of wildfires and ministry decision cancels the race

The weather conditions in mainland Portugal are the main reason for the cancelement of the 2020 Baja do Pinhal, that was scheduled to take place on this weekend, 12 and 13 of September.

Baja do Pinhal, organized by  Escuderia de Castelo Branco was ready to mark the return to competition of the Portuguese and international teams to the race tracks, in the municipalities of Sertã, Proença-a-Nova and Vila Velha de Rodão, in the center of Portugal, but the hot and dry weather forced the authorities to prolongue the proibition of using the rural and forest roads as a preventive measure to reduce the risk of ignition of wild fires.   At the same time, the civil protection forces, including fireman, rescue and police will keep a status of "ready to go" and vigilant to atack any ocurrence soon and prevent it to get out of control

The particular region of Portugal saw one of the most dedliest firest of all times in the country only three years ago, and already  this year a big fire reduced to ashes one area where the race will pass.

Despite the compreension and understanding of the situation, this decision came to late for the race and will case a great damage among teams and organizers, because most of the participants, including many foreigners that went to Portugal for the 1st race of FIM Baja World Cup were already on site.   This very unfornunate situation is a repetition of something that already happened in the past, and come from an office in the capital of the country Lisbon, were not all is taken in to account.  

The organizers did an outsanding work preparing the race under such complicated conditions due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, but this late decision from the authorities doesn't give even the race to the organizers to prepare a contigency plan in order to run the race, even if more than 80% of the route was on areas that were already burn in the recent times and with very low risk of burning again.

Rally-Raid Network