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 | Italian Baja: The "secret" celebrity starters at Italian Baja 2012 - interesting.
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The official starters list of the FIA World Cup opener 2012 "Italian Baja" (March 15-18) is not published yet... but some birds "tweeted" their melody and we listened carefully.
So here we go: 64 cars, 3 trucks, 5 bikes and 7 quads, this is the actual stand of participants. But the line-up is interesting - really interesting.
As we reported, Khalifa Sultan Al Motaiwi from Dubai will drive the X-raid Mini All4 Racing belonging to the Monster Energy X-raid Team. Fireworks are spread by the Russian G-Force Protos with former FIA World Champion Boris Gadasin, Bogdan Novitskiy and Vladimir Vasilyev.
Other sensations: WRC-rally driver Toni Gardemeister from Finland will start with a Mitsubishi, and FIA T2 World Champion Ilya Kuznetsov (Russia) with the new SAM Mercedes 35CC. Peter Van Merksteijn from Holland will start with the all new Toyota Hilux from Overdrive / Toyota South Africa.
From Romania there will be Costel Casuneanu and his Ex-Factory Mitsubishi Pajero Evo, "Hungarian Baja" organizer Zoltan Garamvölgyi from Hungary (Nissan), from the Ukraine Vadym Nesterchuk (Mitsubishi), from Poland former Ski-champion Adam Malysz (Mitsubishi), from Czech Republic Miroslav Zapletal (X-raid BMW X3CC) and Zdemek Porizek with his Hummer...
Among Italian drivers we find once more Manfrinato and a whole team coming from Pordenone, Valentino Bombelli (Mitsubishi) or Riccardo Milazzo with a Chinese Great Wall Hoover.
In the motobikes class, "Australasian Safari" and "Dakar" newbee Manuel Lucchese signed for the race with his Husaberg FE 570cc.
Mitsubishi Italy Cross Country Division is ready to line up the Brazilians Reinaldo Varela and Marcos Moraes, as well as the habitués Riccardo Colombo and Pietro Larini, together with the team of Renato Rickler and all its members. A total involvement concerning all categories, included T4 (trucks) and the new FIA T3 with the dazzling performance of "Light" vehicles.
The clever driver Pavlov Dmitry from Russia got several titles driving his cars, but since last year he seemed to prefer the emotion of riding a quad, as he even seized the first position at the Marocco Rally.
The driver of the RRClub-Russia Team took part to many Baja races in Russia (among them the famous "Baja Northern Forest" - that he won three times); nevertheless, he is now going to face for the first time the Italian Baja and afterwards also all other bajas riding a quad.
"I’m ready" Dmitry said, "and I’m looking forward to riding in Italy. I hope it will be sunny, I carefully tested the quad in Marocco, so I hope to successfully score for the FIM World Cup." The complete interview with Pavlov is available on line on the FMI Quad Committee official website [ FMIQUAD.IT ].
2012/03/02 | 20:57 CET | MR/SY/HS/IB
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