João Ferreira and Filipe Palmeiro stayed firmly on course for victory in the 2024 FIA European Baja Cup with a convincing start-to-finish victory in Portugal’s Baja TT Sharish Gin, an event that was held over stages around the towns of Reguengos de Monsarez and Mourão.
The X-Raid Mini JCW Rally Plus crew won two of the three special stages across demanding rural terrain to the east of Lisbon to carve out a winning margin of 1min 11.3sec over the fellow Portuguese pairing of Helder Oliveira and Fausto Moto, who won the final stage in their Mini JCW Rally. Ferreira also sealed the Ultimate category title in the FIA European Baja Cup with a round to spare after his third successive victory at the event and he is the new leader of the Portuguese National Championship.
Ferreira said: “It was a very difficult race for us. Today, after three kilometres, our power steering pump stopped working properly. For the right corners I was able to work more or less okay but to the left it was not working at all. It was a very tough stage as a result. But we managed to finish even though we went off the track a few times with no power steering. I like this race a lot and had won for the last two years.”
Oliveira was not registered for the FIA European Baja Cup, so points for second place went to the third-placed driver João Dias and his co-driver João Miranda in their Challenger category-winning Santag Racing G Rally Team OT3.
Dias overcame steering issues on the second stage to round off the podium places, while Santag Racing continues to lead the Teams’ Championship. The Portuguese also extended his advantage over Alexandro Pinto in the Challenger category of the FIA European Baja Cup and clinched the T3 title in the Portuguese National Championship.
Tiago Reis and Candido Carrera are battling for the Portuguese Championship and they finished a close fourth in a Taurus T3 Max, with Alexandro Pinto and Bernardo Oliveira rounding off the top five and picking up FIA points for third in their Can-Am.
Victory in the SSV category fell to the Polish Can-Am crew of Tomasz Bialkowski and Dariusz Baśkiewicz. They finished 46.5 seconds clear of the Portuguese pairing of Rui Serpa and Rui Pita in their similar Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR. Serpa had led the category at the start of the final day.
Bialkowski now leads the SSV Championship after four rounds following technical issues on stage two for Miguel Prat Martinez, who finished down in fourth of the registered SSV drivers behind Great Britain’s William Buller.
As the Spaniard explained: “After 10kms of the second stage we were attacking hard and hit a compression that wasn’t visible. The car bounced, went flying and hit hard. We started smelling gear oil and I saw that I had broken the front differential, damaged a steering rod and bent the front chassis.”
Fernando Barreiros and Rui Antonio continued their progress towards a possible FIA European Baja Cup title with another haul of maximum points for winning the Stock category for series production cross-country machines in their Isuzu D-Max. The Portuguese lost traction on the second stage and then sustained a puncture but managed to finish the event in 35th overall.
Fifty-three of the original 56 crews were permitted to start the event, consisting of 19 cars in the Ultimate class, 23 in Challenger, 10 in SSV and one Stock entrant. Of those, 15 were registered for the FIA European Baja Cup with most of the remainder chasing Portuguese National Championship points.
Action got underway with a competitive stage of 27.87km, near Mourão, on Friday afternoon and Ferreira topped the times with a run of 21min 08.6sec to lead the event by 18.2 seconds from Oliveira. Dias came home in third and led the Challenger category but the Toyota trio of João Ramos, Francisco Barreto and Richard Timmerman all hit trouble, failed to finish the stage and were handed 2hr 30min time penalties. A small fire had damaged Ramos’s Hilux and he, like Barreto, retired before day two.
The first of two runs through a varied selective section of 160.50km was staged on Saturday afternoon between Mourão and Reguengos. Ferreira again topped the times, won the stage by 2min 36sec and extended his cushion lead over Oliveira to 2min 54.2sec.
Dias continued to lead the Challenger section from stage winner Reis, Pinto and Miguel Barbosa and Rui Serpa topped the SSV times from Bialkowski. Poland’s Adam Kuś (Taurus), Armindo Araújo (Can-Am) and Bernardo Sousa (Can-Am) were among eight drivers who failed to complete the stage.
The timed test was repeated late on Sunday morning and Oliveira claimed the stage win from Dias, Pinto, Pedro Carvalho and Tiago Reis. Ferreira was sixth but did enough to claim victory. Turkey’s Yagiz Birinci failed to complete the stage and was handed 11hr 15min in time penalties.
The FIA European Baja Cup concludes with Baja Troia Türkiye on November 7th-10th.
Baja TT Sharish Reguengos Mourão – final result (top 25 only):
1. João Ferreira (PRT)/Filipe Palmeiro (PRT) Mini JCW Rally Plus 4hr 45min 11.1sec
2. Helder Oliveira (PRT)/Fausto Moto (PRT) Mini JCW Rally 4hr 46min 22.4sec*
3. João Dias (PRT)/João Miranda (PRT) G Rally Team OT3 4hr 47min 47.0sec
4. Tiago Reis (PRT)/Candido Carrera (ESP) Taurus T3 Max 4hr 48min 38.8sec*
5. Alexandro Pinto (PRT)/Bernardo Oliveira (PRT) Can-Am Maverick X3 4hr 49min 07.6sec
6. Miguel Barbosa (PRT)/Luis Ramalho (PRT) Taurus T3 Max 4hr 50min 36.5sec*
7. Pedro Carvalho (PRT)/Romeu Martins (PRT) Can-Am Maverick X3 4hr 50min 50.2sec*
8. Daniel Silva (PRT)/Gonçalo Magalhães (PRT) Taurus T3 Max 4hr 52min 52.8sec*
9. Alexander Ré (PRT)/Carlos Mendes (PRT) Volkswagen Amarok 4hr 53min 16.4sec*
10. Alejandro Martins (PRT)/David Monteiro (PRT) Mini JCW Rally Plus 4hr 54min 52.5sec*
11. Edgar Reis (PRT)/Fábio Ribeiro (PRT) Taurus T3 Max 4hr 54min 59.8sec*
12. Wlodzimierz Grajek (POL)/Michal Goleniewski (POL) Toyota Hilux 4hr 57min 24.4sec
13. Paulo Rodrigues (PRT)/Miguel Salvador (PRT) Can-Am Maverick X3 4hr 57min 46.5sec
14. Edgar Condenso (PRT)/Nuno Silva (PRT) Ford MO EXR05 Proto 4hr 58min 23.7sec*
15. Pim Klaassen (NLD)/Mark Laan (NLD) Taurus T3 Max 5hr 00min 04.0sec*
16. Diego Martinez (ARG)/Sergio Lafuente (URY) Can-Am Maverick X3 5hr 02min 38.6sec*
17. Tomasz Bialkowski (POL)/Dariusz Baśkiewicz (POL) Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR 5hr 02min 48.0sec
18. Alexandre Franco (PRT)/Rui Franco (PRT) Mercedes 350D 5hr 03min 11.0sec
19. Fernando Alvarez (ESP)/Xavier Panseri (FRA) G Rally Team OT3 5hr 03min 21.4sec
20. Rui Serpa (PRT)/Rui Pita (PRT) Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR 5hr 03min 34.5sec
21. Gaël Queralt (ESP)/Marc Sola (ESP) Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR 5hr 03min 38.0sec*
22. César Sequeira (PRT)/Tânia Sequeira (PRT) Mercedes 350 SLC Coupé 5hr 03min 54.6sec*
23. Rúben Rodrigues (PRT)/Rui Paulo (PRT) Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR 5hr 04min 58.1sec*
24. Ricardo Teodósio (PRT)/Valter Cardoso (PRT) Can-Am Maverick X3 5hr 05min 37.3sec*
25. Dave Klaassen (NLD)/Tessa Klaassen (NLD) Nissan Red0Lined Navara VK50 5hr 07min 05.4sec
*not registered for the FIA European Baja Cup
Select others
30. William Buller (GBR)/Allan Stirling (GBR) Yamaha YXZ 1000R SS 5hr 12min 14.9sec
31. Magdalena Zajac (POL)/Blażej Czekan (POL) Toyota Hilux 5hr 16min 42.6sec
32. Miguel Prat Martinez (ESP)/Ion Del Cid (ESP) Yamaha YXZ 1000R SS 5hr 20min 16.9sec
35. Fernando Barreiros (PRT)/Rui Antonio (PRT) Isuzu D-Max 6hr 17min 01.3sec
38. Adam Kuś (POL)/Marcin Pasek (POL) Taurus T3 Max 13hr 53min 17.5sec
40. Yagiz Birinci (TUR)/Evangelos Sotirchos (GRC) Can-Am Maverick XRS Turbo RR 14hr 05min 49.8sec
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