The Iași rally again concluded this year's season. The special stages (SS) somewhat matched last year's course through the mountains south of  Iași; additionally, three SS west of  Iași were added to the program. The underground was pebbly and in the many forest stages mostly solid earth.

Altogether it made up a beautiful mixture of  fast stages and tight bends, especially on hilly stretches. Beautiful that is, as long as the weather held up and the forest sections do not turn into muddy speed-slides.

Our preparation

Again we brought our training car over to Iași the weekend before the rally. We started the training on Wednesday, as the newly included stages compellingly require the three training rounds.

The schedule listed a „shakedown" on Friday, i.e. a test run with the rally car on a given stage outside of  Iași. Since after the renewed breakdown in Cluj we had requested a technician of  our tuners in France for fine-tuning the engine electronics, these test runs after the software programming were extraordinarily important for us and we used all the time allowed for the engine mapping.

First rally day: Saturday, 25.10.2008

Conditions: 

Weather - cloudy and cold, drizzly in the evening

Roads - partially dry, in the forest wet and muddy

On Saturday there were seven SS to be driven. Three rounds, each with two SS were scheduled, followed by a "Super Special" in front of  the Culture Palace in Iași. The first SS of  each round, „Bârnova" is a 6km long uphill stage, combining fast curves and tight zigzags. SS 2, „Poieni", is a 8km long descending stage, partly made of  extremely narrow forest roads, difficult to drive as they aren't level but tend to drop to the left or right and are cratered by potholes, making it tricky to find an ideal line.

Our hopes for dry roads didn't come true as it had rained the entire day on Friday, turning the first round into a test to see just how wet and slippery the underground was. As both SS went almost completely through the forest, the road surface was as expected softened and the driving on it felt like driving on soap. We covered the SS without problems, our Evo ran again perfectly and we laid after the three rounds with a total of  6 SS on 3rd place in our group. Right before the Super Special it started raining again, which turned the cobbled stone slalom course in front of  the Culture Palace into a slide. We drove this short SS carefully to avoid an unnecessary spin and finished the day still in third place.

Second rally day: Sunday, 26.10.2008

Weather: cloudy and cold

Roads: mostly dry, in the forest still damp and partly muddy

There were altogether 9 SS to be driven on Sunday consisting of three identical rounds each with three SS, with a service stop into Iaşi after each one.

The first SS, Mădârjac (11.9 km), led in fast curves and tight downhill serpentines through the forest. The second SS, Sineşti is a driver's challenge and snakes for 17.3 km uphill and downhill in tight bends on forest roads with „high-speed runs" between the curvy sections. Some corners were still wet and slippery, the fast stages were every now and then bumpy and had a few jump crests that tested our courage. We covered the stage in 10:36,8 min, averaging no less than 98 km/h (61 mph). The third SS, Dumeşti, is a 3.5 km short and very fast stage on loose crushed stone, which we covered in 1:47,9 min, averaging a respectable 120 km/h (75 mph).

We mastered the first round problem-free and defended our 3rd place against a strong competitor, squeezing a 5 second lead over him. The second round ran likewise well, we increased our lead to 8 seconds. In the last round our runner-up ploughed though the course and managed to finish a full 4 seconds ahead of  us. We didn't want to risk a skid as our purpose was to finish at least 6th and despite a good time on the last SS, we could not cover the gap on this short stage and thus finished 4th.

This meant however defending our second place in the championship and hence remaining vice-champion in the group H.

We now only had to drive into the last service and bring our Evo into the closed park.

But as all too often everything had to be different: after the final service our Evo did not start anymore! We pushed the car with the help of  our mechanics to the checkpoint at the end of  the service park and then were on our own: we had to push our Evo for round 300 m into the closed park with no assistance! The road went slightly uphill and our Evo weighs in at nearly 1,5t - it was hell. Foreign assistance meant immediate disqualification and that we could not risk, because this would cost us the 2nd place in the overall championship. We somehow made it to the closed park and to our relief, one of  the referees allowed the mechanics to help push the car to its final parking place. We were absolutely finished, but we had made it!

Unfortunately everything turned out differently again and we felt reminded of  last year's story, as we found out in the evening on the publication of  the results that we had been disqualified because of unallowed foreign assistance in the closed park!

On our demand we learned that the referee's friendly gesture had unfortunately been held against us and due to the official notice of  the leading referee, the rally committee agreed to the disqualification due to unallowed foreign assistance.

It's been a huge disappointment for us and our team, as again our hard-earned success was not recognized.

Facts

A very beautiful rally, lots of  fun and despite the unfortunate ending it was a great finish for the season.

We finished the 2008 rally season on the 3rd place in group H and are especially thankful to our team at MIT Motors for the good support during the 8 events and the great mobilization, not only during the rally week-ends.

We furthermore extend our gratitude towards our sponsors UniCredit Leasing, CTE Trailers, Interior Resources, Asirom, Activ Asigurări, Impression, Langendorf  and Euromedia, without whose renewed support this season would not have been possible.

BRK-Rally Team