Successful Istanbul Rally

The first gravel race of the 2012 Turkish National Rally Championship was completed by Istanbul Rally last weekend. It was a very important rally in terms of championship points so it was a must for us to reach the finish to get maximum points. After a long and hard fought day, we came in first in Class 6, first in two wheel drive cars category, and ninth overall.  On the teams cup standings, we managed to score the most points thanks to my teammates Yagiz coming in second overall and Murat third overall with four wheel drive Fiesta S2000 cars. When you consider 9 S2000 cars and 10 Mitsubishi Evo9’s following the championship, it is a considerable success to reach the finish in the top ten for us and we are very happy about that.

As for the race; it had been 10 months since our last gravel rally and all I can say is that I’ve missed it so much! There was a lot of tension and stress in the air before the rally but in the end it turned out well. Like the first two rounds of the season, we had a very good battle with our teammate racing in the identical Castrol Ford Team Turkey Fiesta R2. It was a long battle where we really pushed the limits of our cars and tyres. It must have been a joy to watch for the spectators.

The stages for the most part were really nice. The first section of the ISG stage was absolutely fantastic. But the latter part of the stage was too rough which caused some damage to our car. Thanks to the intense work of our technical crew at the service, we managed to reach the finish in first position.

The next race is the 6th round of the European Rally Championship – Bosphorus Rally. The stages are very similar in nature to the Istanbul rally but this race has a coefficient of 1.4 in our points standings, so its key to reach the finish as first priority. There will be a lot of really fast drivers coming from Europe for this rally so I would like to wish the best of luck to my teammates Yagiz and Murat for the overall win of the rally.

Orhan