2008 FIA INTERNATIONAL CUP FOR BAJAS BAJA PORTALEGRE 500 (OCTOBER 30-NOVEMBER 2) 02/11/2008
2008 FIA INTERNATIONAL CUP FOR BAJAS
BAJA PORTALEGRE 500 (OCTOBER 30-NOVEMBER 2) Sunday, November 2, 2008
VICTORY FOR RACING LANCER OF
TEAM REPSOL MITSUBISHI RALLIART ON ITS FIRST EVENT
Leg 3 (Sunday, November 2, 2008), Nerpor-Nerpor (Portugal):
Road section: 0.10km. Service (10 minutes). Road section: 28.33km
SS4: 110.00km
Road section: 5.86km. Rally finish. Total distance: 144.29km
MITSUBISHI RACING LANCER
A polished performance from Stéphane Peterhansel/Jean-Paul Cottret (France) and
everyone at Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart on this weekend’s Baja Portalegre 500 has
taken the brand new Racing Lancer to its first victory, straight from the box. Mitsubishi’s
latest cross-country rally car, which will take over from the successful Pajero/Montero
Evolution on next January’s Dakar, ran perfectly reliably throughout the three-day
Portuguese event to win by the margin of 4 minutes 3 seconds after 515.16km of stages.
What counted possibly more than the final result, however, is the fact that the team was
able to profit from the final round of the 2008 FIA Cup for Cross-Country Bajas to validate
recent development work on the new car in the specific conditions of the fast, twisty
mountain tracks near Portalegre.
The Racing Lancer also covered some 5,000km in southern Morocco shortly before the
start of this weekend’s competition and Team Director Dominique Serieys (France) is
particularly pleased with the outcome of this solid, long-term groundwork: “Today’s result
rounds off another successful season for Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart which ends
2008 with three wins and two second places to its name. Everyone has done a
tremendous job ths year. That includes the stafat MMSP, the people at MMC who look
after the engines and, of course, our four crews. It was Stéphane who took the spoils
today, but Nani Roma (Spain), Luc Alphand (France) and Hiroshi Masuoka (Japan) have
all played vital roles, too.”
This weekend saw Stéphane Peterhansel and his co-driver Jean-Paul Cottret recover
from a harmless spin on Friday’s super-special and a puncture on Saturday morning’s
SS2 to pull more than four minutes clear at the top of the leaderboard by the end of Day
2. A quick, yet safe pace then enabled the French pair to come through this morning’s
drier but equally tricky 110km stage to kick off the Racing Lancer’s competition career on
a high note. “After more than a year of hard work to make the Racing Lancer as
competitive as it is today, it is a fitting reward for everyone in the team to have kicked off
the new car’s scorecard with a victory here in Portugal,” observed the French driver. “It
was an honour for me to be chosen by Mitsubishi to give the Racing Lancer its first
outing, and it’s nice to have succeeded in paying back that confidence with a win.”
Having steered the petrol-powered Pajero/Montero Evolution MPR13 to victory on
September’s PAX Rally, which visited the same part of Portugal as this weekend’s Baja,
Stéphane Peterhansel is ideally qualified to compare the performance of the Racing
Lancer with that of its predecessor. “I was especially impressed by two things over the
past three days,” he reported. “The first concerns the engine: the new 3-litre V6 marks a
big improvement in all areas, but it is especially strong out of the slower turns. You can
feel the torque and acceleration of the turbo-diesel powerplant pull you through the
corner and give you the speed for the next straight… The car’s other main strength is its
chassis. An event like the Portuguese Baja calls for a specific configuration and we
essentially defined a basic set-up for the weekend by extrapolating from what we learned
in Morocco. Those settings worked extremely well, and I was pleasantly surprised by the
ability of the suspension to soak up the terrain, as well as by the front-end’s directional
precision.”
“Although this event was short, the conditions turned out to be quite varied, and that was
obviously positive for our mission here in Portugal,” added co-driver Jean-Paul Cottret.
“The terrain was essentially twisty, but quite fast and very delicate, too, so we were able
to establish some good benchmarks. We also succeeded in keeping to the initial gameplan
to win with a big enough margin to cover a possible puncture on the final day.”
Team Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart will remain in Portugal after the Baja Portalegre 500 for a
little further testing before spending time in Spain, for engine calibration work at high
altitude. With the 2009 Dakar fast approaching, the car which contested this weekend’s
event will continue to be used for testing duty, while the official shakedown of the four
cars currently under construction for the rally itself will take place in France (Le Creusot),
on December 15, before their transport to South America by plane five days later.
SS4 CLASSIFICATION (115.50KM)
POS DRIVER CO-DRIVER NAT VEHICLE CLS STAGE TIME DIFF
1 Filipe Campos Jaime Baptista BMW X3 T1.2 1:18:02 **:**:**.* 2 Stephane Peterhansel Jean-Paul Cottret MITSUBISHI RACING LANCER T1.2 1:18:09 +0:07
3 Miguel Barbosa Luis Ramalho BMW X3 T1.2 1:18:42 +0:40
4 Miroslav Zapletal Tomas Ourednicek MITSUBISHI L200 T1.1 1:22:15 +4:13
5 Ricardo Leal dos Santos Joao Luz BMW X5 T1.2 1:22:30 +4:28
6 Pedro Gameiro Manuel Dominguez NISSAN NAVARA T2.2 1:23:17 +5:15
7 Santiago Anglada Enric Oller MITSUBISHI L200 T1.2 1:23:54 +5:52
8 Bernando Moniz da Maia Joana Sotto-Mayor BMW X3 T1.2 1:24:03 +6:01
9 Manuel Plaza Marcos De Quinto MITSUBISHI L200 T1.2 1:24:34 +6:32
10 Joao Ramos Jesus Vitor TOYOTA RAV 4 T1.2 1:25:18 +7:16
FINAL OVERALL CLASSIFICATION
POS DRIVER CO-DRIVER NAT VEHICLE CLS STAGE TIME DIFF
1 Stephane Peterhansel Jean-Paul Cottret MITSUBISHI RACING LANCER T1.2 6:11:48 **:**:**.*
2 Filipe Campos Jaime Baptista BMW X3 T1.2 6:15:51 +4:03
3 Miguel Barbosa Luis Ramalho BMW X3 T1.2 6:22:25 +10:37
4 Tonnie Van Deijne Wouter Van Deijne MITSUBISHI L200 EVO T1.1 6:35:50 +24:02
5 Pedro Grancha Paulo Primaz NISSAN NAVARA OFF ROAD T1.1 6:37:06 +25:18
6 Ricardo Leal dos Santos Joao Luz BMW X5 T1.2 6:38:39 +26:51
7Miroslav Zapletal Tomas Ourednicek MITSUBISHI L200 T1.1 6:40:44 +28:56
8 Joao Ramos Jesus Vitor TOYOTA RAV 4 T1.2 6:47:52 +36:04
9 Pedro Gameiro Manuel Dominguez NISSAN NAVARA T2.2 6:53:22 +41:34
10 Rui Sousa Carlos Silva ISUZU D-MAX T2.2 6:58:23 +46:35