Schlesser seeks and Novitskiy finds…
The first day of the AMV Shamrock-Rallye du Maroc had it share of surprises. Considerable differences have been made between the leaders and the rest and some competitors have had what you could call a long day.. it was mostly the navigation that was a problem and which confused some. Even the old-timers got tricked. For the newbies, panic was the word of the day. The Novitskiy-Tyupen team, on the BMW X3 takes the lead for the cars in front of the Schlesser- Debron duo on Buggy. Chabot-Pillot, in their Toyota T2 were accurate enouh to avoid some regrettable « gardening »…

Leonid Novitskiy, imposing his fast pace, left Jean-Louis Schlesser 17 minutes behind him in the first lap. But the navigation errors of the morning did not prevent the Blue Buggy to get he best time of the afternoon. Impeccable Ronan Chabot takes the lead of the T2 category with a third in the general. On the other hand, Etienne Smulevici, Regis Delahaye and Pascal Boutet had one hell of a day…left behind in the general, their chance for a podium has become slim. Guillaume Balloy and Jean-Noël Julien played it safe and will try to sneak up from behind. In the truck category Elisabete Jacinto, after a blue-sky-day, had a perfect leg in her MAN truck.. first of the category in front of Bruno Bouey, the woman from Portugal takes the 4th place in the general.

Did you say SSV ?
They were looked forward to and they did make the show, especially the two Polaris, handled by Richard Doux and Samuel Lecomte. They ran into troubles before even getting into the timed section. On the liaison, the back cardan came loose on both vehicles, at the same time!!! Both SSVs came out unharmed, whereas Frédéric Alard and Alain Fricker also had some mechanical problems. Richard Doux still gets the 11th place and Samuel Lecomte the 16th !

Tomorrow, more kilometers but a faster track which should please the speed addicts. Be careful however, going over large dunes is on the program and navigation could prove troublesome again.

© CAPSIS International