TERUEL (SPAIN) – Sunday, July 28: Overdrive Racing’s Guillaume de Mévius and Mathieu Baumel made a superb start to their new partnership to clinch a memorable victory in the gruelling Baja Spain Aragón, round three of the FIA World Baja Cup. The weekend was made even more rewarding for the Belgian car preparation specialist when Lithuania’s Rokas Baciuška and his Spanish co-driver Oriol Vidal guided the second of five Toyota Hiluxes to second place to complete a superb 1-2 finish in the punishing heat of central Spain.
De Mévius said: “So, here we are at the end of the race and we won, so very good, very happy. My first time with Mathieu, first time for me winning overall in a race, so a very good weekend for us. I am looking forward to the next step now.” Baciuška added: “It was a tough rally. We had to open the stages on Saturday, first and second. I was driving carefully today because I thought I had a puncture in the beginning. In the last 20km, I had a flat rear tyre and I drove carefully to the finish. This was my first ever race in 2021 with T4. It was a good experience. This was the second time with Toyota.”
Juan Cruz Yacopini of Argentina and his Spanish co-driver Daniel Oliveras delivered another strong performance over difficult dusty terrain and in intense heat to bring the third Toyota to the finish in sixth overall. Yacopini said: “I’m so happy to be here. We made a good last stage. We made no big mistakes. We improve a lot the style of driving.”
Saudi Arabian Yazeed Al-Rajhi and his German co-driver Timo Gottschalk suffered a rear suspension A-arm bolt breakage on the second stage on Saturday and lost a lot of time to the leaders. They recovered in the best possible way to win the third stage on Sunday but the damage had been done and the Saudi finished the Baja in 72nd overall. Poland’s Martin Kaczmarski returned to cross-country rallying after a 10-year absence and teamed up with Armand Monleón in the fifth of the Overdrive Racing Toyotas. After their own fair share of delays on Saturday, the crew reached the finish in 73rd.
“I came back after 10 years away,” said Kaczmarski. “I was also in Aragón 10 years ago with Toyota. It has been something special because I love cross-country. But, in 2014, I had a big accident in the car after Dakar and couldn’t go anymore. Then I moved to rally cross and races. This year, I also did a few races in GT3 but this is my biggest love.”An amended itinerary saw the Prologue stage run for just 5.83km and the two selective sections on Saturday modified slightly to 163.33km and 181.21km, respectively. Sunday’s final competitive stage ran for 162.41km.
De Mévius made the perfect start to his new partnership with Baumel and the duo carded the fastest time on the Prologue to beat Al-Rajhi by 6.3 seconds. Baciuška finished fourth, Kaczmarski was 26th and Yacopini settled into 35th but the times only counted towards starting positions and were not added to the total times. De Mévius continued on the opening stage where he had left off in the Prologue and the Belgian won the opening stage to edge into a 1min 37.9sec advantage over team-mate Baciuška. Al-Rajhi came home in third to give Overdrive Racing a perfect 1-2-3 start to their Spanish challenge. Yacopini and Kaczmarski were classified in ninth and 11th.
De Mévius was in inspired form and he finished the longer second stage 3min 09.8sec faster than Baciuška to extend his overall lead to 4min 47.7sec. But Al-Rajhi stopped early in the stage with a technical problem and then again with a broken bolt on the lower suspension A-arm closer to the finish and was not able to continue. He was classified in 79th place, two positions above Kaczmarski. Yacopini finished the day in sixth overall. De Mévius said: “It was a difficult second part of the day for us. We had a problem before the start of the second stage with a broken belt on the road section, so we changed it. The belt drives the air conditioner and it takes a lot of power, so we decided to drive without the air conditioner for the stage. It was midday so it was hot in the car. But we made it!”
Al-Rajhi recovered strongly to win the final stage after his delays on Saturday but the third quickest time for De Mévius was sufficient for the Belgian to seal a memorable victory. Baciuška and Yacopini finished the last stage in eighth and ninth but, more importantly, they reached the finish in Teruel in second and sixth overall.