The X-Raid team will line up again last year’s winner Przygonski-Colsoul. Entries are increasing day by day at the Italian Baja, like a slow torrent. While the Tagliamento river, quickly reinforced by last weeks’ heavy rains, could disturb the track planned by the Fuoristrada Club 4×4 Pordenone (photo Fuoristradaweb.com). As always, this Cross Country Rally challenge must consider usual weather changes, making a virtue of necessity and moving the ford crossing, creating therefore a sort of cobweb made of routes which after all represent the charme of the Friuli race.
Countdown goes on, waiting for the date from June 21st to June 24th, when a poker of All4 Racing Mini will be lined up with great ambitions. One of the three Mini X-Raid John Cooper Works Rally will be granted to the Pole Jakub Przygonski and his Belgian co-driver Tom Colsoul.
The X-Raid official team proposes at the starting line the crew which won last year, demonstrating its reliability and high efficiency in facing other specialists of the FIA World Cup for Cross Country Rally.
The other two Mini X-Raid will be driven by the crews composed by the Italo-Canadian Eugenio Amos, assisted by the Portuguese Filipe Palmeiro, and the drivers from Milan Michele De Nora and Maurizio Dominella.
After the unlucky result suffered at the Baja Terre di Gallura because of mechanical troubles, Elvis Borsoi and Stefano Rossi aim now to take revenge with their Mini prepared by the Collodel 4×4 Team.
The Italian champions in charge absolutely need to gain important scores at the 2018 challenge, after the victories got at both first two Season races thanks to the successfully performances of Lorenzo Codecà and Matteo Lorenzi with the official Suzuki Grand Vitara. The driver from Falzè di Piave had to obviously pay for his inexperience on board of the Mini All4 Racing, bought just on the race’s eve.
On the other hand, the Lombard driver Codecà, whose palmares boast of 8 victories, seems to be in perfect shape, demonstrating to be perfectly familiar with the Vitara 3.6. He gained the Spring Italian Baja thanks to one second gap ahead on his hard challenger Borsoi, confirming then his supremacy in Sardinia without any effort, forgetting in this way also last season bitterness.
As for the Collodel Team, it will be represented by the Nissan Navara of Francesco Ceschin and Simone Feraboli in the TH Group, and the Suzuki Grand Vitara DDIS driven by Margherita Lops and Giorgia Larosa in the T2 Group.
Carlo Ragogna Italian Baja Press Office
