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This year's edition of the Rally Poland (June 28th – 30th) added another important point to the history of the second of the oldest rallies in the world. The route had been heavily modified and constituted an even greater challenge for the 102 signed up crews. The first and second stages were very different in terms of section specifications, but as the results show, both turned out to be equally demanding. Everything was also intensified by the heat at which most of the competition took place. Technically demanding sections, exceptionally fast pace and high temperature in cars is a mixture that threw the stake hard. Among the crews that reached the finish line were only two of the four Rallytechnology serviced ones. Sylwester Płachytka and Jacek Nowaczewski started the run positively, obtaining the best time on the test section and with a good pace at the beginning of the rally. At the second stage of the morning loop they achieved a result in the top four of the RSMP. Unfortunately, the longest trial of the rally turned out to be unlucky and on one of the corners the Ford Fiesta R5 crew fell out of the way. The car was not badly damaged, however, due to the renewed injury, Sylwester Płachytka resigned from returning to the Sunday stages.
In the second pass of the same trial of over 28.5 km, Marcin Słobodzian and Kamil Kozdroń had a dangerous rollover. Until the accident, they traveled with some problems in their gravel debut with an R5 car, but remained on a good seventh position in the RSMP. The driver was not injured, unfortunately the co-driver suffered a leg injury.
From that time Rallytechnology was represented only by Daniel Chwist and Kamil Heller (Hyundai i20 R5) because bad luck did not spare Dariusz Poloński and Łukasz Sitek. The Poles were leading in the Abarth Cup and holding the third stage of the ERC 2 classification, but after one of the jumps on the SS 7, they were stopped by a drive failure. They returned to the service on the trailer, but thanks to the mechanics' efforts on Sunday morning they were ready to return to the fight. The effort paid off because in the second stage they turned out to be unbeatable winning all six episodes in the Abarth Rally Cup and the RGT category. In ERC 2, they finished four times with the second time, noting one-time victory at the end of the rally. They won the day with an advantage of over 2 minutes, but it was still not enough to make up for the losses after Saturday's failure. The second victory in a row in the cup was won by the Nucita / Pop duo, before Poloński and Sitek. The result was the same as in the Lipawa Rally at the end of May.
In this way, the duo Chwist / Heller was the only one that, without any major problems, made the entire distance of over 200 km. The Krakow driver made good use of the experience from previous starts on gravel surface and systematically made his way up in the classification. Towards the end of the first Sunday loop, the eighth crew in the RSMP field from the Saturday part of the competition advanced to the top seven. With the same result, they also showed up at the finish line in Mikołajki.
Robert Gabryszewski (manager of the Rallytechnology team): Mazurian gravels are always demanding, but this year proved to be particularly difficult. The beginning was optimistic for us and we kept our fingers crossed for our crews, but the course of the competition was not successful for us. For a team in the service zone, the moment when we get information that the crew is standing on the side of the road, or worse, had an accident, is always difficult. Last weekend, such situation occurred three times.
The result in the Polish Rally, not only due to the point bonus, but above all due to its rank, was a priority matter, so the harder it was to accept it. Thank you all for the beautiful fight and determination shown by everyone in the team. We can still enjoy the results achieved by Daniel and Kamil in RSMP, and Darek with Łukasz in the ERC and from the fact that none of the adventures ended in serious injuries.
Now there is no time to lose because less than two weeks areleft to Elektrenai. It's hard to say which crews will eventually appear in Lithuania but everything will be clear within the next few days.
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