Baja Portalegre 500 2021: Dramatic day for T4 title contenders

Welcome back everyone for our coverage of Baja Portalegre, the final round of the FIA World Cup for Bajas and the newly created European Cup for Bajas.

After the last round, Italian Baja, the fight for the T4 World Cup title seemed a three-way battle, with Saudi Arabia’s Saleh Al-Saif (Can-Am, 113 points) in a quite comfortable lead over Kuwait’s Mshari Al-Thefiri (Can-Am, 100.5 points), while Portugal’s Alexandre Re (Can-Am, 94 points) followed the two from quite a distance but still with a mathematical chance for adding the World Cup honours to his tally after taking the European Cup title in Italy.

However, Al-Thefiri had to miss the rally for personal reasons, leaving it to Al-Saif and Re to decide the title fight between themselves. And during the first stage of Baja Portalegre, the remaining two title contenders both had an eventful day. 

Alexandre Re’s start in the QS was not like a dream – more like a nightmare. The door on the side of his brother, Pedro, was not closed properly, and opened right after the start. The Portuguese crew had to stop two times in the extremely short, 3.5 km prologue to be able to close the door, but they were still able to win the stage in T4 with a time of 3m08.3s, 5.3s in front of Italy’s Amerigo Ventura (Yamaha). Saleh Al-Saif finished only fourth behind Lithuania’s Egidijus Valeisa (Can-Am), with a gap of 9.5s to his main rival Re. 

In rain-soaked SS2, the Re brothers faced another problem: a broken intercom, so they had to take a cautious approach. Despite this, they won the special again, almost two minutes in front of Ventura and 2m29s over Valeisa. this trio is also leading the overall classification.

Spain’s Eduard Pons Sune (Can-Am) at 3m06s, followed by Dutch Gert-Jan Van der Valk (Can-Am) was fourth in SS2 at 4m22s, and Russia’s Armen Puzian (Can-Am) was fifth at 4m30s. He was followed by three Portuguese crews: Rui Oliveira (Can-Am) at 4m57s, David Vieira (Can-Am) at 5m03s, and Gualter Barros (Can-Am) at 5m54s. Italy’s Simone de Martini (Yamaha) rounded off the top 10 at 8m23s followed by Dutch Andre Thewessen (Can-Am) at 9m01s and UK’s Graham Knight (Polaris) at 14m47s.

And what happened to World Cup leader Al-Saif? The Saudi hit a stone at km35, causing critical damage to the rear wheel – and maybe also to his title aims.

In T3, Portugal’s David Spranger (Herrator HRX3) won the Qualifying Stage, his compatriot Tiago Guerreiro (Can-Am) was the fastest in SS2, taking the overall lead over Santi Navarro (Can-Am) and Jesus Fuster (Herrator HRX3).

Source: Telegram: Cross-Country Rally News. Rita Konya and Sveta Amelichkina