João Ferreira and Filipe Palmeiro have won the Baja TT Sharish Gin for the fifth time in a row. The Portuguese Toyota crew also won Sunday’s final stage and finished in Reguengos de Monsaraz after 6:42:35.6, including the ten-second time penalty imposed on Saturday. Gonçalo Guerreiro and Pablo Moreno took second with their Polaris at 8:25.1. João Ramos and Jorge Carvalho completed the overall podium at 9:30.9.
The Baja was the fourth round of the Portuguese championship and one of the final two rounds of the FIA European Baja Cup. For the Netherlands, the weekend yielded a podium finish: Paul Spierings and Kala Senders were second in the Challenger class and seventh overall. Against that stood plenty of setbacks at DaklaPack Rallysport. Henk Klaassen, Pim Klaassen and Herman Jasper were all three on or close to a class podium when misfortune struck in the final stage.
Simão wins among the bikes, Paulo dominates in the quads
Among the bikes, victory went, according to the provisional final results, to Micael Simão (KTM). After the first long stage the national champion still stood third, 26 seconds behind Tomás Dias, while Bruno Santos led at that point with a 35-second advantage. Simão finished in 5:54:45.6. Dias (Honda) took second at 14.4 seconds and Gustavo Gaudêncio (Honda) third at 2:38.9. José Luís Rijo (GasGas) was fourth, more than nine minutes back. Championship leader Bruno Santos (Husqvarna) does not appear in the provisional top ten.
In the quads, Tomás Paulo (Yamaha) was by far the fastest with 6:06:29.6. Martim Pedroso was second at 16:02.2, followed by the Pole Marcin Wiłkołek at 16:07.7. José Marques finished fourth at 18:31.3.
Guerreiro places his Polaris between two Toyotas
Among the SSVs, Guerreiro won the T4 category and finished second overall. It was a successful comeback after a tough start to the season: in January he broke three bones in his left hand in a crash on the eighth stage of the Dakar, after which the Baja TT Norte de Portugal was his return. It was his first SSV win of the year, after second places in Norte and Ferraria. The weekend also began with a setback, as a fence got tangled in his Polaris during the prologue.
On the final stage Guerreiro made the difference. Ramos went into the night on Saturday with a 20.2-second lead, but the twisty and technical Portel route suited the SSVs better. Guerreiro was 1:26.0 faster than Ramos on Sunday and thereby moved 1:05.8 ahead of him. According to Guerreiro, his team won every stage in the T4 category. He called it a good bit of revenge after months without racing and said he was glad his Polaris finished between two Ultimate Toyotas from the T1+. The car, he said, was superb all weekend, apart from the prologue.
Luís Cidade and Valter Cardoso (Can-Am) won the prologue by 0.6 seconds over Ferreira, but finished as the second SSV and fourth overall, 3:47.4 behind Guerreiro. Miguel Barbosa and Carlos Mendes were third among the SSVs and sixth overall. João Dias and Nuno Sousa (Polaris) rounded out the top eight.
Ferreira seals fifth win, Reis wins among the Challengers
The final stage, the second run over Portel, was won by Ferreira in 57:14.1, with a 24.0-second advantage over Guerreiro. He won three of the four special stages and secured his fifth win in a row in Reguengos. In 2022 David Monteiro was still sitting beside him. The start was less convincing: on Friday he lost more than a minute to two SSVs on the first run over Portel and stood third after day one, 1:14.0 behind the leader.
Ferreira called the weekend fantastic and said he was over the moon with the large margin. The car, he said, was perfect all weekend, while the terrain was extremely difficult and demanding. He praised Palmeiro’s navigation, which was extra tricky because the pair opened the road, and thanked the Portuguese fans and his team. After a rest day he leaves for Morocco on Tuesday for the next W2RC round: the Rallye du Maroc, the fourth round of the rally-raid world championship, runs from 28 September to 3 October.
For Ramos, who this season had already suffered a failure in Beja and two retirements in Cuenca and Italy, third place marked a successful return to the podium. Among the Ultimate cars, Poles Mariusz Wiatr and Łukasz Łaskawiec (Ford F150 Evo) completed the podium, ninth overall at 19:15.3. The competition for Ferreira in the T1+ remained limited: only five crews reached the finish, and the first pursuer finished more than nine minutes behind him.
Among the Challengers, Tiago Reis won with Nuno Morais (MMP T3 Rally Raid). They were fifth overall, 14:58.6 behind Ferreira. The pair still stood seventeenth after the first special stage and then climbed to the lead in the Challenger class. On Sunday Reis set the third-fastest time of the day, 40.2 seconds behind Ferreira. Edgar Reis and Fábio Ribeiro (MMP) completed the Challenger podium.
The final stage was hard on the retirees. Five crews failed to reach the line: alongside Pim Klaassen and Joel Lutas, they were César Sequeira, Nuno Matos, Pedro Dias da Silva and João Lourenço. Mário Franco and João Miranda did not make the start.
In the Portuguese championship Luís Cidade remains in the lead with 84 points, ahead of Tiago Reis (67), Guerreiro (61) and Ferreira (60). The next round is the BP Ultimate Baja de Portalegre 500 in the third weekend of October. That round also closes out the FIA European Baja Cup.
Spierings on the podium, misfortune for DaklaPack
Paul Spierings and Kala Senders (Taurus Evo Max) finished seventh overall after 6:59:08.1, 16:32.5 behind Ferreira, and second among the Challengers. On Sunday the pair set the eighth time of the day, 1:38.6 slower than Ferreira. They lost more than a minute to Reis, pushing the gap in the Challenger class out to 1:33.9. Behind them lies a large gap: Edgar Reis was third, more than nine minutes back. Spierings was, moreover, the best foreign entrant in the field.
Johan and Yvet Senders (Toyota Hilux) were twenty-first overall at 45:24.9. In the T1.1 class they were second, 2:45.0 behind José Rogeira and Paulo Marques (Ford Ranger) and 32.8 seconds ahead of Hugo Raposo and Rafael Lutas (Nissan).
For DaklaPack Rallysport it was a tough Sunday, as emerged from posts on Instagram. According to the team, the driveshaft broke on Henk Klaassen and Sasha Siripanyavuthi’s Taurus T3 Max with just one stage of some sixty kilometres to go. The pair continued on front-wheel drive alone and held on to third place until 400 metres before the finish. There, a final steep climb proved too much. “How cruel can this sport be?”, the team wrote. Pim Klaassen and Joel Lutas (DKR Evo GTR) lay fourth after earlier gearbox problems and, according to DaklaPack, were still in with a chance of third place. Then their driveshaft broke too, and it went on to damage a water line. With that, their weekend was over. Herman Jasper and Mark Laan (Red-Lined VK50) lay second in their class with sixty kilometres to go, according to the team, when they lost a wheel. “It feels like a bad film that just won’t end”, the team reported.
Dutch crews in the national classification
Oeste Racing Competition reported four podium finishes in the FPAK and FIA classifications. Richard Timmerman and Lucas van Geest won the T8 class, Tonnie van der Hoeven and Lars Bernaards were second in that class. Ronald Schoolderman (4×4 Centrum Ermelo) and José Pires were second in the T1 and third in the national classification, together with the second place of Spierings and Senders among the FIA Challengers. In the national classification Schoolderman finished 11:23.5 behind winners Cardoso and Cortes (Kaizen S1), with Timmerman fifth.
Organisation satisfied
The organisation spoke of an extremely positive final verdict, based on reactions from participants, federations, organisations and sponsors. There were a few accidents and incidents, but sportingly the Baja was, according to the organisation, a success with a large crowd and a strong field of entrants. It hopes to return next year for the 39th edition.
