Story: Liga Stirna
Picture: Janis Barbars/www.rallyemotion.lv
Latvia is small country, but even here there are areas where new and unused rally roads can be used for the first time in an event. The eastern part of our country was missing such an event, but that was until this past weekend when 62 cars started Rally Latgale 2010.
Actually, Latgale is a region in eastern Latvia near the Lithuanian and Russian borders has seen rally cars but it was over 30 years ago when the USSR championship were held here. Until now, most popular motorsport in Latgale was speedway, as there is a world-class race track here in city of Daugavpils that has been included in World Championship Grand Prix series. Hopefully now, rallying will take its place in Latgale’s motoring life.
Rally Latgale 2010 played host to two championships, the Latvian and Lithuanian Rally Championship. As this was a brand new rally, many of top Latvian crews decided to stay home and there the majority of the participants came from Lithuania, while many Russian drivers were also competing.
The event boasted a new format for the recce too: for the first time in the Latvian championship, the recce was limited to only two runs, while in all other rallies there are three. Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea for new event with so many technical stqages, but rules are rules. Before Rally Latgale 2010, the organisers described it as “small Finland” and it turned out that they weren’t exaggerating this at all: blind crests, fast curves with off-camber crests in narrow forest roads were some of the outstanding elements we haven’t often seen in Latvian rallies, but which are so common in Finland and southern Estonia. But these roads didn’t hesitate to take prisoners: most retirements came as a result of crashes, not technical problems. In the very first stage of the rally, one of the fastest 2WD cars went off the road (Zigurds Kalnins – Honda Civic Type R – to post his fourth consecutive retirement this season), and in the next stage the Championship leader in the 2WD Class Arturs Priednieks (Citroen Xsara Kit Car) also retired and in SS4 Ivo Kilpis (Toyota Corolla) joined them with transmission failure. This Class win was taken by Lithuanian Rokas Kvarciejus and is now the 2WD Class leader in the Championship standings.
However, the winner of Rally Latgale 2010 was Andis Neiksans (LMT Rally Team) despite being in second place after the first stage behind Aivis Egle (Tieto Kronus Rally Team). In SS2 Egle flew into a water splash and slid into a tree to damage the front-end of his Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX. His car was repaired in service park, but then the engine began to give trouble and the crew was just happy to crawl to the finish of every stage. In the end, Aivis Egle finished third place in Gp N behind Andis Neiksans and Janis Vorobjovs (Vorobjovs Racing). Leading Lithuanian driver Vytautas Svedas had a big crash resulted in Martynas Samuitis to win in Gp N for the Lithuanian Rally Championship.
There was total disaster for Latvians in Class A Plus: up to the last stage, Martins Svilis was leading, but received a 50-second time penalty for being late at the last time control as a result of them running out of fuel… So it was the second win of the season to be celebrated by Rokas Lipeikis who is now first in the standings of Class A Plus. Ivars Vasaraudzis, who won the last three rallies in a row, used this rally as a test for biggest event in the Baltics this year, the Mad-Croc Rally Estonia, and drove as the zero car and did not scoring any points for Championship.
Rally Latgale 2010 withstood its first exam and hopefully with every year this event will become more and more! Perhaps we could hope for a little less heat as it was over 30˚C over the weekend and you can imagine hot it was sitting in the rally cars in full overalls; a proper rally-sauna on wheels!
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