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 | Breslau Rally: Difficult Navigation in SS02 Sunday, thrilling duels at the front.
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Forest, forest and more forest: The second stage on Sunday lead the participants on a total of 155 km through three sections which were connected by small transfer stages. The first bikes arrived back at the camp at 13:30h the first cars followed one hour later.
Again one old Breslau rule proved to be true. A lot of participants got confused by it while it helped some of the experienced drivers: Even though each km looked like a completely new piece of forest the participants were often crossing their own tracks as in reality they were driving in the same area.
"That was really well done" commented MAN Kat driver Ralf Berlit who caught up some time today due to good navigation and might even take over the lead of the heavy trucks.
"The entire time we crossed driven tracks and a lot of the other drivers got tempted and followed them without thinking. My wife said "right" and all drove left because that was where tracks lead – we went right and also were right with it. The muddy sections were OK today, we simply went through. However the forest tracks were extremely narrow."
Biker Markus Kettler from Munich tells a similar story. "The track was great and the scenery beautiful. I can hardly describe it, just the wide untouched nature on the left and right side of the track. You feel like you have crossed half of Poland yet when I looked onto the GPS it was a criss-cross pattern in the same 50 km spot."
The muddy parts were not a problem for Kettler and he especially could not stop telling about a very challenging mud crossing: "There was a small water stream, almost impassable for us bikers. Some took speed and tried to jump but that proved not be a successful strategy. Fortunately we discovered on one side three narrow branches and we tried to get the bikes across on them. That is when you noticed that the "adventure factor" of the Breslau diminished and professionalism and team spirit kicked in. In groups of four and five we moved every bike across. One or two even fell into the mud and their bike onto them."
For some a small obstacle for others a pure nightmare: French driver Gilles Girousse in his trophy Mercedes G was fighting at the front when he sunk his car so deep into the mud that it took several hours to get them back out. "It was terrible, we were deep down, the winch cable broke, then the winch and the other drivers could not pull me out. Only with two trucks I got out. I really lost a lot of time today. Well, that is the Breslau."
Truck driver Ralf Neubert who was known more for his cautious driving surprised everyone on Saturday by finishing second which his "new" Mercedes SK 6x6 (the ex-car of the Austrian Kotterer team). In Sunday’s stage the team and their "something between 650 and 700 hp" helped various other drivers to get out of sticky situations.
"The last mudhole was already totally worn by all the vehicles that passed through it. In front of us a MAN Kat was fully stuck. We then pulled him backwards out and the organization decided to close that hole for the heavy trucks as there was the quite real danger that they could not pull us out anymore due to the narrowness and missing winch points. So that hole was cancelled for us. Later on we helped Osteszewski Junior by pulling him up a sand hill where he was stuck on the ascent and could not move on."
However, Neubert, his son Guido and navigator Seffen Herbst were not rewarded for their help. Suddenly the engine temperature rose and event plenty of newly supplied water made no difference. "It turned out that one water hose was broken" Ralf Neubert remembers.
"Nothing helped, we had to repair the defect. Between the second and third stage we went out and stopped at a house to ask for water. The local inhabitant immediately improvised and soon we had a garden-hose water supply in place. At the end we lost our position at the front but the rally has just started yet."
On Sunday the cars were dominated by the former winners Oleszak/Chelmicki with their green Nissan followed by a big surprise – the "Fettschnecken" team Wunsch/Pflug and ex-winner Robert Kufel.
In the light trucks section the Belgian Unimog Peumans/De Boer was first being followed by the French Poncet/Daudet Unimog. Chemnitz/Beier/Möller of the heavy trucks were first with their grey IFA in front of team Neubert (Mercedes) and Striebe/Unger-Bachmann/Bräunlich.
Oliver Post was the first bike (KTM) followed by Beat Juen (KTM) and the Swiss Roger Dell Ava. In the quad/ATV class the Polish drivers Remigiusz Kusy, Marek Gluszek und Andrzey Pieron are leading.
2012/07/01 | 18:49 CET | ARTICLE: MR/HS
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