Elisabete Jacinto rose to the third place of the podium of the truck competition of the Morocco Desert Challenge. The Bio-Ritmo® team achieved the goals set for this race after finishing the seventh and final round of this African marathon, where they finished in the fourth place of their class.
The Portuguese took 1h19m52s to complete the 138 timed kilometers that composed the stage that was held between Tendrara and Oujda and finished the special with a difference of 5m25s for the Dutchman Martin Van Den Brink, the winner of the truck category of this event. In addition to the three trucks, only two cars were faster than Elisabete Jacinto in today’s stage.
The Portuguese trio composed by Elisabete Jacinto, José Marques and Marco Cochinho made the whole rally without problems and managed to win two (the first and the penultimate) of the seven stages of this event. In fact, the Portuguese team remained from the first day of competition in the summit positions among the T4 which allowed them to maintain the third place in the overall classification of their class, place obtained at the end of the second day of the race.
The selective sector of this final special was shortened because the bad weather that has been felt in recent days has left some areas unable of being transposed. Thus, for security reasons the organization of the race has chosen to cancel the last 40 kilometers of the stage. Still, Elisabete Jacinto made a positive evaluation of this journey and was very pleased with the result achieved: « today’s special was a little shorter. During the night fell hail and it rained and there were parts with oueds that were full of water and it was impossible to pass. So the organization decided to cut the last kilometers so that there were no problems. The selective sector went well for us. We were the second vehicle to go to the stage and we made the whole special always accelerating. We came a little bit behind the Renault of the 505 team, but at a certain point they stopped with a problem and we moved on and we were the second truck to arrive at the camp. This race went quite well. The balance couldn’t be more positive. We had no trouble throughout and we are very pleased with our result. We already needed a race like this », said Elisabete Jacinto at the end of the stage.
The Bio-Ritmo® team will return to the competitions in October when it will take place the Rally Oilibya du Maroc 2017.
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