The Winter Trial Regularity (23-28 Januari 2011) : 2de keer op rij winst voor Gijs Van Lennep !

The winners Gijs van Lennep and Iain Tulie make it 2 years in a row as they celebrate under the finish arch in a cold Karlovy Vary to win the Trial Class in the 11th running of the Winter Trial.

After taking the lead from Harm Lamberigts and Arthur Denzler yesterday, they held on to their lead today thanks in part to Job Brouwers, one of the rally mechanics, who worked until 3:30 am to replace their broken trip meter with one taken from Rutger Houtkamp’s Porsche 356, he then drove the final leg without a tripmeter. As they say, the winner takes it all, because the team prize also went to the Vierhouten pallets team. ( Lennep/Tully - Lamberigts/Denzler - Perridon/Verhoef.)

The winners of the Club class are Rob de Goey and Ton den Uyl in their Alfa Romeo Sud despite making a navigation error on the last regularity.

For Ton, who is the chief marshal for the Tulip Rally, this has been his first Winter Trial. Ton den Uyl was not supposed to be on the Rally, it was only because Jaap Stok had to bail out a week before the event that Ton stepped in.

Rob has done a number of Winter Trials in various cars and this is his best result so far.

The final day today contained a test and 2 regularities, and one control in particular caused a lot of crews a problem. The route set was on a good quality white road, then take the long way round a gravel triangle to the right. Less than half the crews did this, instead 88% of the Club and 22% of the Trial either drove straight past on the white road or emerged from the forest behind the triangle. A lot of 5 minute penalties were collected here.

We saw our deepest snow of the event on the last regularity. A number of cars went off and got stuck and the final 2 timing points were unreachable due to snow drifts.

From there it was a short run into Karlovy Vary for celebrations and the finish Party.

The best for the day totals show that Harm and Arthur were back on form just beating Gijs and Iain by 2 seconds, and best in Club today were Leon van de Kerhoff and Nico Hermans in their Saab 96. This also moved them up to second overall in Club for the Rally.