Baja Portalegre 2019: Helder Oliveira tested the Mini in Morocco

The Portuguese driver, actual Portugal's cross-country rally vice-champion made his first contact with the Mini All4 Racing from the German team X-Raid in Morocco, where he has been recently for a test session with the car he will be driving in 2019 Baja Portalegre.
Helder Oliveria has been away from the race tracks for most of the season and went to Morocco before the start of 2019 Rallye du Maroc, the final race of FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies where most to the main teams and drivers were present.

"Since the moment that I had the opportunity to drive a car with such potential in Baja Portalegre 500, and taking into account that I'm stopped since last year's edition of Baja Portalegre, that i had the notion that was very important to test before the race. Initially, it was scheduled just a shakedown before the race, that is still on, but I wanted to go further.  Then this opportunity showed up, and exactly with the Mini that I will be racing in Portalegre. It is not necessary to say that I enjoyed a lot my first experience and that I was quite happy with the car, but the most important was to have this opportunity to get to know the car's potential and start to adapt my driving style to the car.  I still need to make some more adjustments to the car characteristics, changing some aspects of my driving style as I did for other cars in the past.  Paulo Fiuza couldn't be present in these tests, but Filipe Palmeiro was with the team in Morocco and gave me precious indications that helped me to adapt faster and to know the limits of the car.  I'm sure that the experience with Paulo Fiuza in this mini will an important asset, not only in the shakedown but especially on the race", said Helder Oliveira.

Baja Portalegre 2019 will start on the morning of Friday 25 of October with the traditional prologue near Portalegre. SS2, the first long stage of the race will be disputed on the afternoon of the same day, with a total distance of 99,2km. On Saturday 26 of October, the participants of the car category will have to more stages to run: SS3 with 191,75km and SS4 with 211,78.

Rally-Raid Network
Source Helder Oliveira's official press release // Photo X-Raid (used just for ilustration)