After the end of “Samsonas Rally Utena” 2023, the history of Lithuanian rally was rewritten – no sixteen-year-old young man has ever managed to win in the overall classification of the event of the Lithuanian Auto Rally Championship. That changed today – sixteen-year-old Norwegian Karl Peder Nordstrand has set the bar extremely high for this achievement.
In the twelfth special stage, K.P. Nordstrand and J.N. Listerud took over the leading position, driving the Škoda Fabia Rally2 Evo car, and did not give up first place until the finish of the competition. After applying the judges’ penalties, a sudden reshuffle took place in the fight for second place. V. Jurkevičius and A. Paliukėnas, driving an identical car to the winner of the rally, were five seconds faster than the Estonian E. Kaur in the last special stage, and when the penalties were announced, it turned out that this was enough for the Lithuanians to jump to the second position. Meanwhile, E.Kaur and A.Birjukovs driving Ford Fiesta KMS Proto remained third.
The fastest Latvian team at the rally was E.Blūms with D.Eglitis- they drove a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX and finished fourth in the rally. The top five was completed by the fastest team in the LARČ5 class – R. Steponavičius with D. Ketvirtis. Their Ford Fiesta N5 was twenty-eight seconds faster than the main competitors in this rally – the Ford Fiesta N5 of D. Gezevičius and T. Nenartavičius. The extremely hard duel between Rokas and Deividas partially ended on the eleventh stage, when Deividas made a mistake and lost a lot of time.
D. Gezevičius’ mistake could not be used by the crew of the guests from Estonia T. Korge / A. Vahtra, who were 13 seconds behind the Lithuanian with the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X and remained on the seventh place in the overall standings.
Another change in the final stage took place in favor of the Poles, where T.Abramowski / A.Tomaszewski managed to overtake G.Firantas / M.Valiulis in the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII in the last kilometers with their Ford Fiesta Rally3. The top ten was completed by the very stable crew of L. Vaškys and L. Paškevičius, driving a Škoda Fabia N5+.
The real drama took place in the 2WD class. Before the last special stage the Polish crew T.Jocz /M.Judycki had a considerable lead of eleven and a half seconds over the next competitor, but after crossing the finish line everything changed. The special stage of just over eleven kilometers was driven extremely fast by the young Turk C.Alakoc with the co-driver A.Malnieks, well known to the Lithuanians. This spurt lifted the young Turk directly to the first position from the third place, where the Italian crew V.Ledda / C.Mele fell back. Only 0.42 seconds separated the winner Can and Tymoteusz after the finish. Italian Valentino was 2.30 seconds behind the winner. All three crews were behind Ford Fiesta Rally4 cars.
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