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The first round of the Belgian Rally Championship 2015, the Rally van Haspengouw, has been won by Kris Princen in a Peugeot 208 T16. Freddy Loix was forced to retire early, but despite the unfortunate circumstances, this could still be a strong indicator to what additional excitement we are to expect in the ERC Ypres Rally on 25th to 27th of June this year.
 On the first stages it looked like Kris Princen and Freddy Loix were evenly matched. It was Kris Princen’s first drive in a 4WD Peugeot for 13 years, yet on the very first stage he beat Freddy Loix in the Skoda Fabia S2000 by just 0.2sec. But in SS2, Princen lost over half a minute due to an undisclosed problem, which handed the lead over to Fast Freddy. In SS3 Princen pipped Loix again by 2.3s, but right after the stage, Loix parked up his Skoda with a blown engine.
From that moment on, Kris Princen essentially dominated the Haspengouw time sheets, and by SS5 he was back in the lead which he held to the finish. The main battle shifted, focusing on who would be taking places 2, 3 and 4, with the three Citroen DS3 R5 drivers Pieter Tsjoen, Vincent Verschueren and Cedric Charain swapping positions after almost every stage. In the end, it was Vincent Verschueren who had the upper hand, followed by Cedric Cherain and Pieter Tsjoen. It was The Netherlands’ Michiel Becx in a Ford Fiesta R5 who came 6th overall, with Bertrand Grooten in yet another DS3 R5 rounding off the main teams in 7th place. Despite quite slippery conditions with several sections on cobble stones, Patrick Snijers in the Porsche 911 RGT even managed a couple of top 3 stage times, and found himself in 5th position behind the big DS3 R5 battle of Tsjoen, Verschueren and Cherain, but a transmission problem forced him to retire in SS8. |
