Foreign crews took the podium at the final stage of the Belarusian Rally Championship
08/11/20100 views
On November 8, Minsk / Ekaterina Zhilyanina - BELTA /. The final stage of the Belarusian Rally Championship was held in the Braslav district. 27 crews from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania started the race called "Braslav Jaf Tea Rally", as reported to BELTA correspondent by Danila Dolmatov, press secretary of the off-road competitions committee of the Belarusian Automobile Federation.
Within a few hours, participants had to cover 9 gravel special stages with a total length of 81.4 km. Due to the rains that occurred the day before, the surface of the special stages became slippery in many places, and after the first run by the racers along the track, large stones appeared. As a result, there were retirements from the race. On SS-2 (second special stage), Boris Lukomsky damaged his car, and on SS-4, the Russian crew of Maxim Tsyganov and Alexey Lukyanuk got into a serious accident, which led to the early end of the first section of the rally.
The second part of the race proceeded without serious incidents. However, after the finish, several protests and applications for review of results and assigned penalties were filed by the participants, as a result of which the award ceremony was delayed for a couple of hours.
The top three places went to foreign crews. Vytautas Švedas and Tomas Balžekas (Mitsubishi Evo) celebrated victory in the Belarusian rally, and it was evident that the Lithuanian crew did it with ease, ahead of their closest rivals by more than a minute. Ramūnas Čapkauskas and Tomas Šipkauskas (Mitsubishi Evo) took the second step of the podium, and the Ukrainian crew of Valeriy Gorban and Yevheniy Leonov (Mitsubishi Evo), who showed the second result in the race but received a penalty for touching a retarder, completed the top three in the absolute standings and the B12 class.
The Lithuanian crew of Vilmantas Pupšys and Gediminas Račas on Renault Clio proved to be the best in the two-liter B11 class, and the winners of the B10 class were Belarusians Dmitry Yakimokho and Olga Zakharova on Citroen C2.
Preliminary championship results indicate that the first place in the absolute standings and the B12 class went to the Ukrainian crew of Volodymyr Petrenko and Dmytro Yarovenko. The second place in the overall standings and the first in the B11 class were retained by Belarusian rally drivers Anatoly Shimakovsky and Igor Makarchuk. The third in the absolute standings and second in the B12 class was the Belarusian crew of Yury Grishchenkov and Denis Reviako. Most likely, the winners in the B10 class will be Belarusians Sergey Yushchik and Roman Shirnyuk.
Thus, the Belarusian Rally Championship has concluded. As planned, next season three rally races will be held in Braslav, and three rally sprints will take place in the Minsk and Vitebsk regions. Joint competitions are not ruled out, as was the case this year when one of the stages of the Russian championship was held during the international rally "Slavic Cup". -0-
BELTA