It is rare that at the end of a race (with 450 kilometres of timed stages) the top two drivers are tied. And how it is decided? The winner is the race is those, who has won the first (non-qualifying) stage. All this means that Krzysztof Holowczyc and Lukasz Kurzeja, returning to the sport after seven years, finished first, ahead of the duo of Yazeed Al Rajhi and Michael Orr, who raced in Hungary for the first time.
Can you imagine the excitement of the last few metres? The two teams involved gave it their all and then stopped to settle the score at the finish of the final stage. The final result made both very surprised, almost shocked, especially because they suddenly didn't know which of them had won.
"We fought until the last metres, we pushed as we could because there was no chance to count," said Holowczyc. "We had a small mistake on the first stage, we had to go reverse and lost fifteen seconds, so we were forty-two seconds behind going into the last stage. We went flat out, and at the end we try to figure out the times with Yazeed. When I saw that after 450 kilometres we were on the same time, I couldn't believe my eyes. What was the secret of our success after we lost for five-minutes on Saturday? I think that we were able to change rhythm when we needed to."
Yazeed Al Rajhi was racing in Hungary for the first time, but it didn't reflect in his performance at all, he drove a balanced race throughout and although he was a little disappointed with second place at the end, he really enjoyed the intense battle.
World Cup leader Yasir Seaidan had to settle for third this time, but he was not disappointed. Especially after he crashed a tree four kilometres before the end of Sunday morning's stage. He got a puncture, too and the Mini's radiator was damaged in the crash, but the service team managed to fix all the problems.
In the side-by-side category, Alexandre Re had bad luck on Saturday by choosing the first starting position. It usually works in Portugal, the drivers behind can swallow the dust, but here they lost a lot of time because they often failed to find the right direction.
"It's our first HunGarian Baja, it was a good lesson," said Re. "I thought yesterday's long stage would be difficult today from the opposite direction, but to be honest I enjoyed it much more and the main point is that we won the side by side category."
In the motos category, Germany's Sebastian Bühler won the race by almost four minutes ahead of Slovakia's Stefan Svitko, a returning rider for HunGarian Baja who almost always finished at the beginning of the classification. This time he finished second.
"The tracks were quite scattered with the cars' tracks, because they completed the stages twice ahead of us, so it was not easy for the riders. As for me, I kept improving from stage to stage and finally managed to win the race, which I'm happy with," said Bühler.
Third-placed Joaquim Rodrigues said this race-format was new for him, with the same stages more times, but he tried to finish it and carry out his original plan: to test the bike in race conditions for the Dakar.
FINAL RESULTS
CARS
1. Krzysztof Holowczyc, Lukasz Kurzeja (Polish, Mini John Cooper Works) 4:56:28,
2. Al-Rajhi, Orr (Saudi, British, Toyota Hilux) 4:56:28,
3. Saeidan, Kuzmics (Saudi, Russian, Mini John Cooper Works) + 13:54 min.
MOTOS
1. Sebastian Bühler (German, HERO) 3:43:11,
2. Svitko (Slovakian, KTM) 3:42 p h.,
3. Rodrigues (Portugal, HERO) + 5:11 min.
Source Hungarian Baja
