Italian Baja 2021: PRK Sport Rally Team faced a difficult race in Italy

It was a hard weekend, but, above all, another international experience accumulation, this one in which PRK Sport Rally Team competed in Baja Italia, a race that was simultaneously valid for the Baja World Cup and the FIA Bajas European Cup.

With the participation of Pedro Dias da Silva / José Janela, in a Ford EXR05 pick-up (#219), and Filipe Nascimento / Paulo Torres, driving a PRK 002 Buggy (#304), a vehicle developed in the team's workshop, is not time to make the balance of the race for the Portuguese.
The competitive section of the race started with the Qualifying Stage / SS1 of Meduna, a 7.55km section in which Pedro Dias da Silva achieved the 10th best time, while Filipe Nascimento secured the second-best mark in group T3, and was 22nd overall.  Then followed SS2 Dignano, with 74.94 km, where the duo racing the EXR05 pick-up guaranteed a mark that made them climb three places in the overall classification, ending just a little more than 10 minutes away from the leaders, while the PRK buggy climbed to 18th place. 

On Saturday, the teams repeated the same stage 3 times, which was divided into two sections - Pasch (12.4 km) and Dignano (79.91 km), where things didn't go well, especially for Pedro Dias da Silva.

"I confess that expectations were high, especially after running SS1 and evaluating our progress against our opponents, and things were well on track so that I could climb one or two more positions, eventually ascending to the top-5, but a succession of problems came to destroy our goals. First, there was a problem with the clutch, then a puncture that delayed us, and finally, I lost power steering with 20 km to go".

As a result of these constraints, the Portuguese duo lost more than half an hour, falling to the 13th final position.

Filipe Nascimento managed to keep his PRK buggy in 18th place overall, finishing as the second-best in the T3 group, among the only 20 teams that reached the end of the hard Italian race, out of the 29 that started it:

"It was, in fact, a very hard race, but simultaneously a very good experience, which allowed us to gain some more experience for future international events that we may take part in".

After this Italian round, the FIA Bajas European Cup 2021 will have its last race in Portugal, at Baja Portalegre 500 (October 28-30). Playing at home and with greater representation, the PRK Sport Rally Team intends to achieve a series of good results here, not only in general but also in the different categories in which the cars that will be entered are included.

Automatic translation from the official press release