The Baja Portalegre 500 was a baptism of fire for the Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart team and the new Racing Lancer before the team and drivers set off for the Dakar 2009. Stéphane Peterthansel & Jean–Paul Cottret won the race held in Portugal by protecting the big lead they built up yesterday. The Repsol drivers finished this morning`s 110 kilometre special just seven seconds behind the winner, Filipe Campos.
The great work done by the whole of the Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart team allowed the new turbo-charged Japanese car to takeover from the Montero with a victory. The Racing Lancer drivern by Peterhansel and Cottret ended the over 500km of special sections in the Baja Portalegre with an advantage of 4 minutes and 3 seconds, successfully overcoming their rivals and the slippery, twisty tracks that they came across over the three days. But above all this race has allowed the car to get its final adjustments before it begins to defend the Repsol colours in the Dakar that starts on 3rd January in South America.
Stéphane Peterhansel
“After more than a year of hard work to make the Racing Lancer as competitive as it was today, it is a great reward for the whole team to win the first ever race it has competed in. It is a honour for me to have been the driver chosen for the debut, and it is nice to return the favour with a victory. I am especially impressed by two things. The first is the engine, since it is an all-round improvement, but above all coming out of slow corners. You can feel the torque and the acceleration of the turbo-charged engine pushing right from the start. The other strong point on the car is the chassis. A race like the Baja Portalegre requires a special set-up and what we have done is to adjust a basic setting that we found in Morocco. Everything has worked perfectly. Moreover, I was also pleasantly surprised by the very good performance of the suspension and the precision of the front axle.”
Dominique Serieys
“Today`s result is another success harvested by the Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart team, a squad that ends 2008 with three victories and two second positions. All the members of the team have done some great work over the last year, from the people at Mitsubishi Motor Sport, to the engineers at MMC [Mitsubishi Motors Corporation] who made the engines, to of course, our drivers. The driver responsible for racing here was Stéphane [Peterhansel], but both “Nani” [Roma], as well as Luc [Alphand] and Hiroshi [Masuoka], have played very important roles.”
