The first rallies of the year are done and the off-week is now offering the chance to take a look back at the rallies done so far – by the way with 3 events in 3 different countries the most international season kickoff so far.

I started the season together with Thomas Lorenz in the Fabia S2000 at Rallysprint Kopná in Slušovice, CZ. Three very challenging stages and not less challenging weather and road conditions made the first kilometers of the year really tough ones. After light rain at the start, the weather improved up to some sunny hours and led to mostly dry roads, but resulted due to the really muddy passages in the forests in really tricky stages in the end. Anyway in the end an event, which learned us a lot and helped us to get to know the strengths of the car in those tricky conditions.

The week after, I got to the next rally abroad. Together with Nicolai Göttig, I started at the Mitropa Cup kickoff in Slovenian Rally Velenje. Due to the pandemic situation, the event was shortened massively and only two stages driven three times were left in the end. That in turn served our needs very well as Nicolai’s focus  for the event was set to the improvement of break points. Once again, we had to tackle rainy conditions, but were able to make good progress over the course of the event.

Event no. 3 – and the first one in Germany – was last week’s kickoff of the German Championship around Lübbecke, back with Thomas. At Rallye Stemweder Berg, we good collect the first dry kilometers this year in the Skoda and were able to show, which potentials we might raise over the course of the season. Solely on those  about 110 stage kilometers, we were able to improve our pace by almost 2 seconds per kilometer and reduce the gap to the leaders to partly below 2 seconds per kilometer. No discussion: There is even more possible and our self-set target by the end of the season to become the fastest non-R5 car should be reachable by the end of the season.