Persberichten - WRS3: Inaugural Champion!

WRS3: Inaugural Champion!

Congratulations to Debik, and his driver Martin Vaculik on taking the very first honours in the rally discipline!

Vaculik lead the series from day 1, and looked set to obliterate the field early on, however the season unfolded into a very competitive and close run affair into the latter stages. At around the mid point of the season, Vaculik was winning stages by a good 20-30 seconds, and had won 5 events, to Hunters 2, but a tight focus and intense training regime for the Brit saw the gap close week by week, and at season's end the inequality was eradicated, the pair taking all 14 event wins, split evenly at 7/7 between them, the bonus coming for Wynn, taking top honours in his own backyard at Rally Wales!

Perhaps the most significant revelation came at the final event in Australia, where the pair went head to head, same tyres, no mistakes, four straight days of fair and just competition, with Hunter coming home P1, fourteen seconds ahead of the Champion, and a massive gain in performance when compared to the deficit in the early rounds, leading many to speculate as to how the pair will fair next season, as both look to be promoting to WRS2.

"I'm overjoyed to be honest" said the now 22 year old, "It's easy to look back and lament, as we have already done, we finished 14 points behind Martin, but dropped 18 points in the very first round after stacking it in the wall from P2 in Monte, considering this was our only DNF of the season is painful, but you can't take anything away from Martin, he was clearly the man to beat this season!"

The final piece of silverware was claimed by one of the series most phenomenal overperformers, Visvaldis Ceļš. The 18 year old competing in his first full series of anything could only just scrape a point or two in the early rounds, and looked to many to be doing well in a series of significantly more skilled drivers. But similar to Hunters approach, Ceļš (seemingly) went hard on rally skill focus, and spent the season carving his way up the ranks rapidly, the Latvian eventually making himself at home regularly on the podium!

WRS2 presently looks to be set for a repeat battle between the highly accomplished Vaculik and the young pretender Hunter, twelve years his junior, as the pair vie to become (or remain) MRC's #1 ranked rally driver!