English


Dutch youngsters beat their fathers in super special stage
Date: 03 April 2009



During the opening stage of the WRC Rally Portugal in the Algarve Stadium in Faro, the youngsters took the lead over their fathers in a head to head battle by setting faster times. Dennis Kuipers was the fastest of the four Dutch WRC drivers with a 14th place closely followed by Peter van Merksteijn junior in 16th position lagging 0.4 seconds behind.

René and Dennis Kuipers were the first to start of the joint teams of Van Merksteijn Motorsport and Ipatec Racing on the Super Special Stage. With a difference of 2.4 seconds Dennis beats his father René and was at the top of the leader board for a long time. After the remaining 16 WRC car's of the field made their run the time of 2:19.2 was good for 14th place and René was in 19th position.

The starting procedure of the Van Merksteijn cars went quite different from expected. Arriving at the starting line after having to wait for the burnout of Sandell there was only 10 seconds left to prepare the Ford Focus WRC for the start. Peter jnr. Had the least problems with this but father Peter had not yet engaged the right gear when the light turned green and stalled the engine and lost over 30 seconds to get started again. With a time of 2:21.2 Peter jnr. Was 1 second slower than Kuipers jnr. Which resulted in 16th place. Peter van Merksteijn, with starting number 18, is in 67th place lagging 40 seconds behind Peter jnr.

 

Tomorrow will see the start of the rally when the drivers will have to run the 6 special stages with a total length of 136km. The Rally Portugal is regarded as one of the toughest rallies on the 2009 WRC schedule with fast roads and very technical sections. The rally will start at 9:00 with 15 minutes service before the cars will head for the Ourilque special stage.

 

Standing after Super Special 1:

1 H. Solberg (Ford) in 2:09.6
2 Sordo (Citroën) at 0,1 seconds
3 Hirvonen (Ford) at 0,1 seconds

14 Dennis Kuipers (Ford) at 9,6 seconds
16 Peter van Merksteijn jr. (Ford) at 10,0 seconds
19 René Kuipers (Ford) at 12.0 seconds
67 Peter van Merksteijn (Ford) at 44.2 seconds



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