Maxim Decock has bad luck weekend in Poland
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Maxim Decock and Tom Buyse suffered double setbacks last weekend in the Rally of Poland, the third round of the Junior ERC. With their Opel Corsa Rally4 they had to abandon the battle on both Saturday and Sunday, but with a lot of extra experience under their belts the duo is now eagerly looking forward to the Ypres Rally.
After the successful first European Championship experience on unpaved roads in Hungary, a sponsor event was planned for Ascension Day, which gave the service team a lot of extra work in the run-up to the Rally of Poland. “The weather was not good that day, which meant that the course was in a terrible state,” says Maxim. “After that, we decided to take the mechanics out to clean and check them, because the dirt was really everywhere. We mainly do this with a group of friends in the evenings, which sometimes makes it difficult to combine everything. So it was all hands on deck to get ready for Poland.”
Nevertheless, the Opel Corsa Rally4 was in top form again at the start of the shakedown last Friday. “When it was our turn, the track was in pretty bad shape. That made it difficult to find a really good setup. On Saturday morning we set off with a car that turned out to be a bit too high. For the second round, that height turned out to be too low. During that second round, we unfortunately got stuck in a sink. The radiator had moved back a bit and had hit a pipe of the steering box. After a kilometer we had no more servo and I could actually no longer steer. To avoid further damage, we then decided to put the car aside.”
Sunday morning we started with renewed courage, but the adventure was short-lived. “During the second test we were surprised at a pit stop where Sesks and Verstappen had previously made a mistake. We had estimated the bend faster and had to swerve into a field. In terms of suspension, nothing was damaged, but we immediately had vibrations. It soon became apparent that a coupling in a drive shaft had broken. It was out of the question to drive two more tests like that. Game over.”
The duo looks back on a difficult but educational weekend in Poland. “I actually found the course really difficult and tough. In Hungary everything was more open and you had more margin, but that was not the case in Poland. The KPs reminded me a bit of a narrow Rally of Finland. There are also a lot of blind situations. Our times were not particularly good, but we simply did not have the experience to be able to do that. In addition, our participation in the Ypres Rally in two weeks was somewhat in the back of our minds, so we also kept some margin under our feet.”
In the meantime, the team is already working hard on the next big goal. “Now the focus is completely on the Ypres Rally. We are currently converting the car to an asphalt setup and checking everything. The car will also be in a new livery for Ypres, since we will be defending the colors of Kasteelbier 0.0% there. Their intention was to be represented in Rally2, Rally3 and Rally4, and they succeeded with Freddy Loix, Benoit Verlinde and our team. Next week we will do another test with them. It will be good to find the feeling for the asphalt again there. Last year we had to let go of a second place in Ypres, so I think it is clear that we want to go all out for the victory in Rally4 and the Stellantis Cup there”, says Maxim Decock.
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