The 9th - 11th July
saw the WRC travel for the first time to the
city of Borovetz in the beautiful country
of Bulgaria.
This WRC / JWRC event
was not nominated by usual Suzuki pilot -
Aaron Burkart but was nominated by his team
mate; the young (17y/o) Estonian driver -
Karl Kruuda. Whilst the Bulgarian Stages were
a new challenge for all competitors, it was
more so for Kruuda since the Bulgarian Rally
was to be only his second ever competition
on Tarmac with the Ypres Rally two weeks ago
being his only other tarmac event entered
into as a ‘warm up’ for his JWRC
priority championship campaign.
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The first few stages on Day 1 began with
French driver; Arseno and Belgian driver;
Neuville in the lead positions, closely
followed by Weiss and Lemes. Kruuda began
the day with the strategy of caution first
and the aim to increase speed as his confidence
improved. His clever tactics and faultless
performance saw him end Day 1 in 8th position. |
The second Day was much
of the same, Suzuki driver; Kruuda moving up
to 6th, Citroen Pilot; Neuville taking the lead
and Arseno dropping down to 10th.
The third and final day
saw Kruuda in a battle for 4th place with Italian
driver; Broccoli - Kruuda missing out in the
end by only 1 second.
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The event was won by Neuville, followed
by Weijs and local driver; Slavov, with
Broccoli in 4th and the young Estonian;
Kruuda in 5th. The 10 points earned for
this position now place Kruuda 3rd in
the JWRC championship, behind the current
leader; Kevin Abbring and fellow Suzuki
ace; Aaron Burkart in 2nd. |
The young Estonian;
Karl Kruuda commented: "This surface
was completely new for me. I have driven a rally
car on tarmac only once before and that was
2 weeks ago in the Ypres Rally, the Belgian
stages were completely different from these
though! I have tried to drive fast, but the
others were faster. Finally at the end of the
rally I was pleased that I was able to finish,
and I think I learned a lot which will help
me in the forthcoming tarmac event - in Rallye
Deutschland. My goal was to finish this event
without any mistakes, because I need to gain
more experience on tarmac my speed was not as
good as I would have liked, my aim was to catch
Broccoli on the last day, which I almost did,
only 1 second was between us in the end. It
is a little disappointment for me, but I am
sure next time I will be faster."
Yasuhiro
Ishii, the Suzuki Sport Europe team manager
commented:
" I have to admit I didn’t expect
this good a result from our young driver, I
was pleasantly surprised . I instructed him
that he must be familiar with the tarmac surface
and gain confidence before taking any risk.
We have seen huge improvement with his driving
during these past 3 days. In the beginning he
was losing almost 2 seconds per kilometer compared
to the top JWRC drivers, in the end this time
difference was reduced down to only 0.2 second.
This is fantastic, he has proved his ability
and talent and I am sure that in Germany he
will be able to fight for podium."
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