Miroslav Angelov and Nedyalko Sivov are the leaders after today’s first race day of the anniversary 50th edition of Rally “Bulgaria”.
The Megaport Racing crew finished the day with a minimum lead of 2.6 seconds ahead of Dimitar Iliev and Petar Stoychev after a spectacular battle on the sections near Shumen.
Today’s extremely demanding day was also full of interesting moments for a large part of the crews. In SS1 Angelov, Iliev and Dan Gertofan with navigator Tudor Marza recorded the top 3 times, the difference between the three being only 1.1 seconds. On the next section, Iliev/Stoychev recorded an identical time to that of Angelov/Sivov, thus the battle continued throughout the morning.
The team of Yordan Atanasov/Yanaki Yanakiev reached the third place in the final of the first day. The ART Racing duo was unable to challenge the R5s, but did manage to trouble them more than once.
Dan Gertofan and Tudor Marza started well in their first participation in Rally Bulgaria, coming very close to completely troubling the leaders Angelov and Iliev. A stud problem literally seconds before they left the midday service forced them to work more than they were allowed to on their car. Due to the delay in fixing this problem, the Romanian crew received a penalty of 1:30 minutes.
The top five is rounded off by Gertofan’s son Andrey, who with his navigator Doru Vraya navigated extremely successfully on the unknown Bulgarian stages.
Georgos Dudas/Christian Chabot are sixth in their Peugeot 208 R2. The Hungarians had a problem with their car’s electronics in the last stage of the day, but are performing excellently. Todor Atanasov/Vladimir Vladimirov, competing with VAZ 2108 and leaders in Group E, finished the day impressively. In the general standings, the Varna people are seventh.
Stanislav Vladimirov and Chavdar Sabev fought a great battle for the lead in the RC 3 class. Despite problems with an overheated engine in the second stage, the pair managed to close the gap to first place in class and finished eighth overall after the first 11 stages.
Anton Titov/Dinko Georgiev and debutants behind the wheel of an R2 car Denis Stanchovski/Mladen Karchev complete the top 10 of the anniversary rally “Bulgaria” after the first day.