2003 Reports: « prev || Jakarta || Dakar || Vilnius || Santiago || Las Palmas | |
25/10/2003 Definitely the biggest surprise on Dakar was Tsino's victory. He sent only one replay but it was enough for secure win. At the beginning his blue indy crashed lots of times. As Tsino complained to us, he didn't have experience driving on dirt. But after some test laps he got good results. Now I think dirt road is one of my strengths, told the best rookie so far. Akoss Poo placed 2nd, and it's the best result this season to him. Mostly because of it, and also for beating Alan Rotoi second time in a row, he was announced as "Man of the Race". Alan Rotoi is competing now only for podium place. But he managed to get his first leading point. So, with every race there's less doubts about champion's award for 2003 season. Alain was a bit slow on muddy track. He couldnt extend the winning streak and finished 4th, 4 secs behind the leader. Nice result in debut race showed italian Zioalfa. At the moment he needs an official team for further progress. Repectively in 6th and 7th places settled Zak McKracken and Krys Toff. Well, not too bad result as they earned few points. But it's sure, they could have been faster. Without points left satanziege, Mingva, mushi and Leo Ramone. They weren't very active and sent only 1 or 2 weak replays. Perhaps only Leo worthy of praise for his attempt to drive in manual. On Dakar we missed Bonzai Joe who had good results on last two tracks. After the race we met with him in "Cork's Crew" paddock and took comment. 1st - Tsino. Although my time was very good, I think my first place was easy because other racers are not giving the best. 2nd - Akoss Poo. I'm satisfied very much with my second place, there are a lot of good racers behind me! I've never been so close to victory before, only half a second... My only complaint is that I'm beaten by my new biggest opponent, Tsino. 4th - Alain. I wanted to take part to this fantastic race. I just proved to myself I am still one of the best drivers in the world. 5th - Ziolfa. 5th place in my first race. Not too bad I think, but at the time I have no chance to compete with the best racers. I wish I can drive soon with manual, but I need time to test it. My setting was not so good and my car tended understeering. 8th - CTG. I had to give up racing in the summer, so I lost my spring performance. In spite of this fact, my time was an easy and short work - I'm sure I was able to improve it. 12th - Leo Ramone. Dammit! I was in points area all the time, but I not made any point! I'm without enough time to improve my performance, but I'm in interesting and hard transition from automatic to manual transmission...
DNS - Bonzai Joe. It's probably a nice track, but I've no motivation to race here. I never liked ISA or IRC rules, and I just raced because it was a challenging and fun competition. It still is, but I don't care about that anymore. | |