The Baja España-Aragón concluded on Sunday in Teruel with the third and final special stage, a repeat of Saturday’s morning stage between Argente and Concud. This brought an end to an edition that had been postponed by two months from its original July date due to the risk of forest fires.
João Ferreira and Filipe Palmeiro won the rally for Toyota Gazoo Racing, with Portuguese debutant Luis Portela an impressive second. In the bikes, Lorenzo Santolino won after rival David Braceras crashed on the final stage. Seven Dutch crews lined up at the start in the cars, with points in the European Baja Cup Ultimate class for Pim Klaassen as the highlight and full points in the Challenger class of the World Baja Cup for Mitchel van den Brink. In the trucks, the overall win went surprisingly to Czech driver Karel Poslední, ahead of the two Dutch Rainbow trucks.
Santolino wins after Braceras crash
In the bikes, Santolino and prologue winner David Braceras remained evenly matched throughout Saturday. On Sunday morning Santolino took the lead, after which Braceras crashed while chasing and needed medical attention. Santolino rode the remaining kilometres to victory unchallenged, his second consecutive win in Aragón. Alfredo Pellicer finished second at more than eleven minutes, ahead of Hugo Blanjoue and Portugal’s Tomás Coutinho Paulo, who won the quads. Antoine Sanchez, Marcin Wilkolek and Ethan Mackenzie Lane completed the top seven. Sara García Álvarez was the best female competitor in ninth place. Braceras himself does not appear in the final results: he had to retire from the rally after his crash.
Ferreira holds on, drama for Al-Rajhi and De Mévius
Ferreira and Palmeiro, who had already won both special stages on Saturday, did not relinquish their lead and won the rally by 3 minutes and 53 seconds over Luis Portela and Carlos Jorge Mendes of Overdrive Racing. For Portela, who moved up from the T3 and T4 classes and was only driving his first rally in the Ultimate class, this was an excellent result following a prologue win earlier in the weekend. A four-minute time penalty for missing a waypoint on Saturday’s first stage possibly cost him the chance of more.
Saood Variawa and Charan Moore finished third, ahead of Cristina Gutiérrez and Marc Sola, who wrapped up a strong Ultimate class debut with the Spanish Santana in fourth place. For Yazeed Al-Rajhi, Sunday ended in disappointment: the Saudi was still second going into the final stage, but had to stop after an oil leak onto the brakes and dropped back to 46th place. Dania Akeel, by contrast, recovered impressively from a disappointing prologue, in which she finished 33rd, to sixteenth place in the final results. Guillaume de Mévius, who had finished the prologue second but fell far back on Saturday, won the final special stage himself but could manage no better than 29th place in the overall standings.
In the Challenger class, the day’s win went to Gonçalo Guerreiro, who is not competing for points in the World Baja Cup. In the SSV category Afonso Oliveira won, and in the Stock class Fernando Barreiros.
Klaassen best European Cup driver, full haul for Van den Brink
Pim Klaassen and South African navigator Leander Pienaar finished eighth in the overall standings with Daklapack Rallysport’s DKR Evo GTR, as seventh in the Ultimate class (T1+). Of all the cars entered for the European Baja Cup in that class, this was the best time of the weekend, good for the full round points in that category. The team itself called the result a classification win in the European Baja Cup on this round and said it was proud of a top ten overall finish, after continuous work on the car throughout the weekend.
Mitchel van den Brink and Bart van Heun finished second in the Challenger class with South Racing’s Can-Am Maverick R, behind Guerreiro, who is not registered for the World Baja Cup. This earned the pair full points in that class for the world championship. In the overall standings the team sits in eleventh place, subject to the usual random fuel analysis to which numbers 304 and 405 are also being subjected. Van den Brink said afterwards he was very satisfied and reported that the pair are now also leading the Challenger class of the World Baja Cup, by a small margin.
Henk Klaassen and Sasha Siripanyavuthi finished fourteenth overall and third in the Challenger class with Daklapack Rallysport’s Taurus T3 Max. Sander Derikx and Michael Schuttel followed in 25th place, ninth in that same class. Richard Timmerman and Kala Senders won the T1.1 class and finished 38th overall with their Toyota Hilux. Johan and Yvet Senders completed the rally in 39th place, twelfth in the Challenger class. Rients Hofstra and Wouter de Graaff had to retire from the rally on the final stage and did not reach the finish.
Surprise win for Poslední, Van Ballegooij fastest on the final stage
In the trucks, the win long looked like a matter between the two Dutch Rainbow trucks, but Czech driver Karel Poslední took the victory on the final stage. Tjeerd van Ballegooij, who struggled with a blowout on Saturday, repaired the damage overnight and clocked the fastest time on the final stage on Sunday. This lifted him from last to third place in the final standings.
Gerrit Zuurmond, who together with Jan van der Vaet and Jaap Zuurmond had led for most of the weekend, had to concede the stage to Poslední and finished second, 19 seconds behind the Czech. William de Groot finished fourth. That left the top three positions in the final standings separated by less than a minute and a half, with three of the four trucks that started crewed by Dutchmen.
The next round of the FIA World Baja Cup is the Baja de Portalegre 500 in Portugal, in mid-October.
