Bas van Kamperdijk claimed a decisive victory in the Tank S Rallysprint. Together with his co-driver Tim Rietveld they accumulated a lead of almost a minute in the Van Merksteijn Motorsport Evo IX.
Last year’s Twente Rallysprint was the first occasion that Van Kamperdijk and Rietveld drove together in a rally event. With a third place in Hengelo the brothers-in-law were caught by the bug of driving with the fast group N Evo IX and decided to drive several events together this year. Because of the busy business schedule of Van Kamperdijk it was decided at the very last moment to start in Emmeloord. “The construction of the new factory for packaging buckets and the offices of HK-Plastics in Almelo is has been completed and the building is now in use since last month. Now that the relocation is a finalized we are able to take a weekend off to start in Emmeloord with the Evo IX.”
Thanks to a change in the regulations it is possible from the start of this season to choose between various kinds of fuel. A possibility that is now offered is to switch from the environmentally unfriendly petrol which is made from the scarce fossil minerals to BioEthanol. This new fuel is made from biological products like corn, wheat and sugar cane and is a more environment responsible choice. Van Merksteijn Motorsport has grasped this new opportunity and when possible will only use this new “green” fuel for its group N Evo’s.
At the time of the start of the first special stage for the rally sprint on Saturday evening the rain was pouring down and the organization was forced to shorten the 5.9 km long stage by almost 1400 meters. Van Kamperdijk had a strong start of the event in these difficult circumstances and lost only 2.4 seconds to Smits in the Escort WRC. On Kampereiland, the second special stage, the HK-Plastics director found his rhythm and reduced the gap to a mere 0.4 seconds. What promised to be an exciting fight between the WRC and Van Kamperdijk in the group N Evo came to a sudden end on the Tank S Special when leader Smits made an error in the chicane which ended his event.
With a lead of 45 seconds over the new runner-up, De Jong and Hagman, Van Kamperdijk and Rietveld controlled the rally sprint and could cruise to the finish. With 4 out of 6 fastest stage times and a lead of almost 1 minute they scored an outright victory in the Tank S Rallysprint.
End result Tank S Rallysprint
1 Van Kamperdijk (Mitsubishi) in 26:15,2
2 De Jong (Mitsubishi) at 57,9 seconds
3 De boef (Subaru) at 1:22,0
