Istanbul Rally: A rally worth following!

 

What a weekend; First three cars within 15 seconds, the fourth is 8 minutes back! 2014 Istanbul Rally will be remembered for staging one of the best duels of the year amongst three young generation drivers. Castrol Ford Team Turkey teammates Murat and Orhan against Mini’s weapon Yagiz Avci. We completed the event 8 seconds behind our teammate and winner Murat and Yagiz is further 6 seconds behind us.

 

Perhaps one of the most exciting duels of my rally career just unfolded in Istanbul Rally. Burçin and I wanted to scrape off the old dust from Bursa rally therefore we tried to concentrate on our mental game. We knew we had the ability to challenge for the podium if we had the chance, we just wanted to create that opportunity. Mental game is important during the rally. Burçin is a great motivator, he is very calm which helps us greatly in these types of situations.

We had the podium in our sight from the start of the event, but on Sunday we were able to attack a bit more to secure second place from our rival Yagiz Avci. He had a bit of problems with dust entering his cocpit, and we managed to take full advantage of that to finish the race in second overall. I would like to thank our team manager Serdar Bostancı, Teknik Motorspor, Ford, Castrol, Pirelli and all our co-sponsors for giving us the opportunity to achieve this great result.

Next up on the calendar is European Rally Cups Bosphorus Rally. An event which we won in 2013 where we took our first overall win. Its an emotional race for us. I hope to be on the podium this year also.