The 2nd competitive day of the Italian Baja concluded for G-Force Motorsport. It started even earlier than yesterday actually, as the team woke up at 6 am to get to the parc ferme in time and go the start of SS2. The strategy "Give in to gain up" applied yesterday turned out to be the right one: being first on the road, Tonnie van Deijne got lost in directions and hence lost some time, searching for the right way. While Boris Gadasin and Vladimir Demyanenko carefully followed the route, watching their rival's driving lines and making notes to the road book for futher passages.

The first passage through the stage brought even more confidence to the crew. An advantage of 1'18 over the nearest rival - that was the outcome of SS2. And while the car was checked at service and adjusted by the team's experienced mechanics, Boris was mentally preparing to repeat passages of the 80-kilometres long competitive distance. The main lesson from the morning experience was that the car's capabilities and especially its engine's performance allowed to tackle the route cautiously and at the same time comfortably maintain the advantage. That meant the chosen rhythm would prove ideal for the rest of stages so that just comfortably pass the distance lap by lap.

However, as usual in the off-road sport there wasn't without some funny sutiations: the car returned to the afternoon service aithout the rear left lamp - it was just ripped off the bodywork by a tree branch. We were rescued though by the "sicilian mafia". We're not kidding - one of the retired Italian crews kindly supplied us with a one from their broken vehicle - this part was so rare that it turned out impossible to find a lamp of the new model for Nissan Navara in the whole service park. Emotional Italians delightedly assured our mechanics that with this lamp the Russian crew would only finish first. Well, at least being first car on the road will be G-Force Motorsport driver's prerogative for the morning stage.

The Russians' nearest competitor - Miroslav Zapletal, - came to the evening service and get out of the car with a sorrow smile on his face. "Everything was fine, the car was perfect, but just not enough power", - said he with regret looking in direction of G-Force Motorsport. However, lack of power didn't disturb him maintain a minute and a half advantage over Tonnie van Deijne who is competing in a much advanced works-built Mitsubishi. Russian Alexander Mironenko holds 4th place in the general classification after Day 2, but both he and hungarian Balasz Szalai are very far behind the leading trio - 14.5 minutes, which is much of a gap even for longer rally-raids.

Tomorrow will define who's been the fastest over the Italian roads during three days of the Baja. Competitors will have to cover the same distance in the same direction twice more. And probably this could be the biggest difficulty as we can't blame the Italians in the lack of good roads for rallying. Instead, the same route may have a false influence on self-confidence of those drivers thinking they already know the track very well. So there's only one option - not to relax... Tomorrow is another day, and there're still 300 kilometres to go, 164 of which come to special stages...

Unofficial results after Day 2:  it09_afterss4.pdf 59.58 Kb
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