Story: Evan Rothman
Pictures: Jos Bergman and Christian Kuhr (www.ckworks.de).
Last weekend’s Rally Gronegau in Germany was for Jurgen Beinke and his WRC Vodafone Rallye de Portugal FSTi ace co-driving daughter Josefine Corinn their first home event in 2010. Josefine is part of HANDBRAKES & HAIRPINS’ “Ladies in Rallying” campaign, and is proving to be a star in the making.
Josefine relates her experience of Rally Gronegau EXCLUSIVELY to HANDBRAKES & HAIRPINS:
“My father Jurgen managed to get the car ready just in time for the start of the event. When the first car took to the first stage of the rally, Team Beinke/Beink was confident of a strong result.
“Despite problems in the very first stage and during SS2, we pushed on. After these opening two stages, we looked at the timesheets and were happy to see we had unbelievably claimed ninth place overall and had a lead of 4sec over our rival Mando van Baren in the Group CTC. Unfortunately teammates Axel Beinke/Maik Bredenforder (Opel Ascona 400) were forced to retire from the event after this first loop of stages.
“With a light rain shower dampening the roads and making the surface slippery, teams were expected to be more cautious in the second loop of stages especially as we were all fitted with dry rally tyres. We took the pace a bit easier, and in doing so we lost our lead in our Class (CTC 23) with Mando van Baren taking it from us. At the end of the SS6, we were only 11sec off the class leaders.
“Through the final two stages making up the last loop of stages of Rally Gronegau, my father didn’t push his Opel on the wet and slippery roads. We finished second in Group CTC and Class 23. The category win went to Mando van Baren and his Ford Escort BDA, with a 20sec winning margin.
“We are very happy about this great result, especially to finish our home event after such a disappointing 2009 when we didn’t even finish the first stage. Even though we had some problems in this rally, we finished and had fun rallying.
“The overall winner of the rally was Rene Kuipers/Erwin Berkhof in a Subaru Impreza N14, just 3,4sec ahead of Jan Nijhof/Henk-Jan Elbert (BMW M3 E30) and Bas van Kamperdijk/Tim Rietveld making this an all-Dutch podium. The first German crew home was Walter Gromoller/Klaus Brokelmann (Opel Manta 400) in their last event in this car. Their new rally machine will be an Opel Ascona 400, to be debuted at the Eifel Rally next month.
“Our next event will hopefully be the Rally Stemweder Berg this weekend. The same as the recent Rally Sullinger Land, this event counts towards the ADAC Rally Masters Championship. This event can also be called our home event, as the Rally HQ is only 30km from our home. We will see if we can solve the engine’s problems before the start!”
