English

The two Dutch rallyteams of Van Merksteijn Motorsport of peter van Merksteijn and Ipatec Racing of René Kuipers have combined their resources and will take part in several World Rally Championship events in a joint effort. The team management of Ipatec Racing will be provided during the WRC rounds by Van Merksteijn Motorsport.

After the succesful partnership of René Kuipers and Peter van Merksteijn during the last Dakar Rally where Kuipers achieved a respectable 18^th position in the BMW X3CC, the two teams from Hengelo, Holland, decided to work closely together in the future. Thanks to the extensive experience Van Merksteijn Motorsport gathered in the previous years in the WRC and in Le Mans, the organization of the events and the team management of Ipatec Racing with drivers father and son René and Dennis Kuipers will be in the hands of Gerard Grouve. The first rally where the two teams will be present in the new situation will be the WRC Rally de Portugal in the first week of April.

Even though both ipatec Racing and Van Merksteijn Motorsport are competing with similar Ford Focus WRC rally cars, the preparation and the technical support of the cars will stay separated with Wevers Sport taking care of the cars of Ipatec Racing and Van Merksteijn Motorsport with Armand Broekmans being responsible for the technical side of their own cars.