Rally Bohemia Historic got dominated by Vlastimil Neumann on Ford Escort RS Cosworth
With more than a nine-minute lead, the Rally Bohemia Historic was dominated by this year’s sovereigns Vlastimil Neumann / Martin Hlavatý at Ford Escort RS Cosworth. They managed to win the Czech Historic Rally Championship for the fourth time in a row.
The challenging tracks of this year’s Rally Bohemia were a challenge for historic cars, with only twelve of the 25 making it to the finish. The highest mortality was among the top ten cars. The biggest theoretical rivals of Vlastimil Neumann, Libor Kotrmon with the legendary co-driver Jan Krečman on the second Ford Escort RS Cosworth crashed on the new stage 5 Rašovka on Saturday morning after they had won the previous stage 4 Hradčany. Brothers Petr and Martin Hejhal on Škoda 130 LR, who also were among the favorites of the race, also withdrew on this stage, as well as Petr Hustý / Rudolf Kouřil with attractive Mercedes-Benz 190 E 2.3, who ended up with cracked cooling hose. They went on riding also on the second day, but only out of the overall standings. The winners of this year’s Rallysprit Kopná, French with Czech license Stéphane Scellier and Veronika Tepla, stayed a bit lonely on the second place. But that was true until Saturday evening, when their Opel Kadett GSI began struggling with the problem of attaching the gearbox, which made them slow down and thewithdraw on Sunday. Thus traditionally fast crew Vratislav Hýbner / Jiří Jonášek with Peugeot 205 GTI got to the second place. However, they were not even to see the finish, because on Sunday afternoon they crashed on the penultimate SS Radostín. The 205 GTI Peugeot’s were not successful at all this year, when Tomáš Volf / Milan Donoval crashed hard on Saturday and Martin Klepáč / Radek Outěřický had to withdraw on the last stage just before the finish.
The silver spot of the absolute standings in the finish at the Old Town Square in Mlada Boleslav were celebrated by Poles Teodor Stolarek / Adam Jaros with Suzuki Swift GTI, who scored their biggest success in three years in the Czech competitions and also won the heavily occupied category 4. On the third and fourth place, the former drivers of the ŠKODA Motorsport factory team from the 90’s, Vladimír Berger / Ladislav Zuzánek and Jindřich Štolfa / Zdeněk Hawel, placed behind one another. Vladimir Berger, who had a stronger Škoda 130 LR Group B, had a superiority from the beginning to the finish ramp, while last year’s Rally Bohemia Historic winner Jindrich Štolfa drove a less modified Škoda 130 L of the A group. This year, he remained just below the absolute podium but on the third place in category 4.
Beautiful fifth place overall and mainly a category 2 victory among the four crews in the finish, this is a great success for former Czech representative in cross-country international races Josef Kakrda and Štepán Chludil on Opel Ascona A. Second place in this class for cars from the first half of the 1970s was gained by Bohumír Svoboda jr. / Zbyněk Soběhart on Škoda 1000 MB and third Tomáš Carbol / Kristýna Smrčková with Škoda 120 S Rallye.
In the class 5 of cars from the 1990s, after the sovereign Vlastimil Neumann, ran for the second place between Jaroslav Šenkýř / Jiří Hándl on the Suzuki Swift GTI and Miloš Sekyra / Jakub Kotál on the BMW 318, which ended just 18 seconds in favor of the former mentioned. For the sake of completeness, let us add that in class 3, after the crew Luboš Dolák / Jiří Kulhan crashed, was not finished by any car.
Detailed results and photos of all parts of Rally Bohemia 2019 can be found at www.rallybohemia.cz. You can also watch the race events on social networks. The traditional general partner of the competition is car company ŠKODA AUTO.
Rally Bohemia can be found on these accounts on social networks:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/rallybohemia
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2019-07-15 [259]
