The Banat Montan Rally is leading through the mountains in the southern part of Reşiţa heading for Anina-Steierdorf, Oraviţa and Bozovici. The roads are very fast; the greatest challenges are the curves with pebbles on the newly asphalted streets and the bad conditions of the „old" streets. Besides, a mammut program had been planed: almost 500 kilometers to drive and around 170 km of special best time stages a resistence test for man and machine.

Our preparations

The special stages (SS) are very close to one another, so we were able to finish the training without time pressure and luckily without technical problems. Two new SSs had been added to last year's program: along a narrow, canyon like river valley, between the rocks and the river, with many fast, but also very sharp, narrow curves - a great rally road.

Day 1 of the Rally: Friday, 11.04.2008

Conditions:

Weather: cloudy

Asphalt: dry

In spite of predictions of rain and many clouds the weather remained dry and we started the 4^th SS program with tires for dry land. SS 1 "Resita" starts in Resita in the direction of Anina and reaches Carasova. A very fast trial on a new road, meaning that pebble was spread around in nearly all curves because of the shortcuts over the pebbled roadsides - so if you can't find the "clean" track, driving with 120-160 km/h, you probably won't be able to avoid flying off the road.

For the SS 2 "Oravita" you had to drive a long way until Oravita; the SS leads from Oravita to Anina and contains many fast hops and curves uphill and downhill. The stretch is extremely bad in many places and the biggest holes had been filled with pebbles during the training period - one more challenge!

SS 3 leads back from Anina to Carasova - again on new road, a very fast drive with a combination of fast and narrow curves and turns. Extreme attention was again required in order to find the ideal path through the curves filled up with pebbles.

Driving about 150 km/h, we failed to find the best track in one of the fast curves and it was very hard to keep our Evo on the road and not throw it into the concrete margins.

SS 4 is in the opposite direction of SS 1, from Carasova to Resita, under the same conditions, only that now the curves are filled with pebbles in both directions and it is even harder to find the ideal path. At the end of one of the fast curves, just before a narrow curve to the right, we weren't able to find the optimal time to hit the breaks and our Evo got out of control - we had almost taken control again when we hit the guardrail with the right front wing/ bumper/ spotlight/ engine hood and because the street is very narrow in this spot, our car didn't fit any longer. Fortunately it was just a damage of the carrossery and we could carry on our journey soon enough, although we had lost around 10-15 seconds.

In spite of the "slip", by the end of the day we managed to get the 3^rd place in our group, after the Pitigoi team with a Ford Focus WRC and the Abraham team with a Mitsubishi Evo 9.

Day 2 of the Rally: Saturday, 12.04.2008

Conditions:

Weather: very cloudy, rain

Asphalt: dry - moist - wet

It had heavily rained at night, so that some of the mountain sections in the woods were still wet or at least moist, although the streets in Resita were dry.

We decided to start with intermediates and for the service in Bozovici we prepared both tires for dry land and intermediates.  The first round made out of four SSs started with the SS 1 on the previ ous day; the road had generally been dry, excepting the segments in the wood that were moist and slippery. The same conditions on the SS 5 from Carasova to Anina; because around half of the road lies in the forest, the danger of "taking off " in one of the moister, greasier curves was higher.

We managed to finish both SSs without problems and started the SS 7 towards Bozovici through the canyon like river valley - here almost the entire segment was wet and very slippery because of the bad street pavement.  However we made a good time and before the regrouping for the ST 8 we were still on the 3^rd place. Because the weather remained unstable, we decided to drive on with intermediates. Back to the service in Resita it had been raining so we had to start the last round with rain tires - again a right decision because it had been raining almost without cease on the last big round of the four SSs and we didn't only have to fight the tough way, but aquaplaning also.

In addition to that, our clutch bad started to show intense signs of deterioration and we still had around 60 km of special stages to go as well as a long round back to Resita. The challenge couldn't have been greater - taking into consideration the two "followers" right behind us. 

The SSs 9 and 10 went on reasonably well; on ST 11, a 18,5 km long uphill and downhill hop, the clutch drastically weakened and we fought not to lose too much time. We checked the times and we hardly managed to maintain our time advantage.

On the last SS 12 the clutch "slipped" with every acceleration; we had to tour the motor very high in order to maintain our speed, which naturally also made the car unstable, at the same time it was pouring and the way was very slippery.

We managed not to slip and to maintain our time advantage as well: we finished the rally on a great 3^rd place in our group and overall on the 15^th place.

Conclusion

A very nice rally, with long and demanding SSs.  A challenge for the 68 teams and because of the weather conditions - additionally exciting and full of surprises; The technical conditions represented an additional challenge for us, therefore we are pleased with the result.

And with 9 points we are on the 3^rd place in the championship of group H.

We thank again our MIT Motors team for the good preparation of our Evo and all our sponsors.