In one morning with a lot of rain and the track conditions extremely difficult, Boris Gadasin, in G-Force Proto, was the most effective in the first special stage, long of 145.19 kilometers, and held the best time with a 6m17s advantage on second fastest, Rui Sousa, in Isuzu D-Max.
The water that fell all night and remained in the morning, created many difficulties and several teams went through problems. Vladimir Vasilyev, who is debuting at the wheel of a Mini All4Racing, is not able to learn more about the car, but nonetheless came to assistance with the third time.
Overall, the three drivers occupy the same positions in the classification, but the second and third are separated by just 26 seconds.
"Everything went well. The mud tires we have chosen worked almost flawlessly", said Gadasin. Rui Sousa joked when he said that "it was a good offroad ride", but I could not take risks with the tough conditions on the road. We were calmly and yet hit on a cork oak. It is being an old-fashioned, Portalegre that requires lots of driving and ability. This is offroad on its original philosophy. "
Miguel Barbosa returned to Portalegre after lots of problems. The driver of the Mitsubishi Racing Lancer had to stop to change the electronic box because the car was misfiring. In addition, he had to complete the last 50km without power steering. "If we cannot solve the problem, we must retire", complained the driver when he got the service. Fortunately for Barbosa, the technicians managed to solve the problem, but the team has to penalize 12 minutes entering parc fermé, and fell to 11th place.
The Portuguese champion was not the only one to go through problems. Nuno Matos, who had the fastest time in the intermediate control, lost more than 35 minutes for Gadasin. Electrical problems on his Opel Astra Proto delayed the local driver. "In the end we still had to be towed by Marcos Moraes because the car stalled on the arrival", Matos said.
Ricardo Porém, who is fighting with Nuno Matos by second place in the Championship, also lost a lot of time with problems with the handbrake pump. The only way to proceed in the race was disconnecting the rear brake circuit and use only the front brakes. But this was not the only incident with the current runner-up in the Championship. The young driver had to slow down the pace because the turbo was doing too much pressure and ran the risk of breaking the engine. Currently occupies the 22nd position.
In the T2 category, faster was the Brazilian driver Marcos Moraes which thus leads the race with more than three minutes ahead of Edgar Condenso. Durval Costa, seventh in the overall standings, is the best of the competitors entered in the Mazda Challenge.