LEG 1 : DRAWSKO POMORSKIE – 24.06.2017

Rallye Breslau Poland 2017 – the adventure rally for everyone

Are you ready for a legendary offroad adventure? On the 24th of June Rallye Breslau Poland starts in Drawsko Pomorskie, where more than 140 teams disappear into the deep forests of West-Poland. It’s the beginning of the most legendary offroad rally for bikes, quads, buggies, cars and trucks in the heart of Europe, with eight days of racing and international competition. The rally will finish on the 1st of July with a great award ceremony.

Rallye Breslau Poland has adventure and competition written all over it. Those who want to live the classic Breslau-feeling join the Extreme Class with all natural obstacles. On a separate route and roadbook the Cross Country class offers almost the same delight, but with dry feet and higher speeds.

LEG 1
24.06.2017

The Breslau Rally 2017 in Poland has started! The 2017 edition of the traditional rally started in its first stage during changing weather, 16 degrees, constant cloudy, cold wind and light rain. 163.8 kilometers, of which 149 kms were ranked, were on the agenda on Saturday for the fast cross country participants, 148.8 kms overall and 134 kms ranked for the “mud fraction” of the Extreme Class.

After the expected route near Posznan was canceled due to a military deployment, the organization had to find a new terrain only a few days before the rally, and also had to find new routes and write new road books. Fortunately, in Drawsko Pomorskie the local officials said “Yes” – the rally was normally supposed to end there. A strange situation – but everything went well.

The route itself was varied, fast passages in open military terrain, slower tracks with tank waves, forests, water and also a little mud for the cross country participants made the Saturday interesting. The extreme class was allowed to feel deep water on the first day and also get some chances to test their winches.

Almost a sensation a rallytruck caused today. Only once in the history of the rally, a race truck was faster than all, indeed, all the participants – the famous “Hellgeth-Unimog” (actually bought and piloted by Daniel Günther). The Hellgeth-Unimog, at that time piloted by its builders, became even the total winner. Almost this should be repeated today.

Tom Heuer, Marco Richter and Tobi Henschel from the Team Süptitz started the first time with their “new-used” truck: The former Dakar-Tatra 815 of the Czech rally legend Karel Loprais and his son Ales. The expectations were correspondingly high. And they fulfilled: With a time of 02:38:22 they were almost the fastest. Only Danish quad driver Nicholas Harkjaer (Polaris Scrambler, 02:24:01) and bikers Rico van der Sanden (Holland, 02:35:19) and Michal Latoch (Poland, 02:24:01) were quicker. Respect.

A special feature of the recent history of Breslau is the integration of the German Rallyraid championship GORM, in which participants can only be part of the cross-country class for the first two days but will be fully integrated into the rally. So today was dominated by the fast participants, among them an armada of Dutch FIA-compliant rally cars. Here the they have just two days – but with the same effort and the same amount of travelling.

It is annoying to be forced to give up on the first rally day. Unlucky today was the Mercedes Unimog Racetruck of the German-Hungarian duo Hanspeter Karches and Szantho Csaba. In a narrow passage, the Unimog rocked, sighed, hit a tree with the wheel and tipped. Fortunately no one was injured, but in the evening the team finally had to retire.