The Lithuanians took 3rd place among the FIA European Baja Cup participants and 13th place in the overall classification. After the Spain stage, B. Vanagas remained the leader of the FIA European Baja Cup.
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On Sunday, the athletes faced the last 151 km of the special stage. From the first kilometers, it was clear that on the last day of the competition, the competitors were ready for a maximum attack – the fight lasted until the finish, and the leaders’ pace was very high.
The final result does not fully reflect the speed demonstrated by the “Gurtam Toyota Gazoo Racing Baltics” crew this weekend. After taking 19th place in the overall classification in the Friday prologue, on Saturday B. Vanagas and A. Paliukėnas rose to 8th place overall and led among the FIA European Baja Cup participants.
The fight for victory was greatly complicated by a mistake in one of the speed limit zones. For momentarily exceeding the allowed speed, the crew was given a five-minute penalty, which pushed the Lithuanians down the results table. The pace shown before the penalty indicated that the crew had the speed to fight for victory in the FIA European Cup classification.
“Am I satisfied with the result? No. We came to fight for victory in the European Cup and expected more. This weekend we had speed – on Saturday we were first in the European Cup and eighth overall. But we made a mistake that cost us five minutes and greatly complicated our result.
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Today it was very clear that everyone went out to take everything that was still possible to take. The fight lasted until the last kilometer, and the colleagues’ pace was impressively high. The result is what it is. We finished, took important points, and remain the championship leaders. Now we need to draw conclusions and move on,” said B. Vanagas after the finish.
Over the three days of the competition, the crews covered almost 500 km of special stages on the technical and rocky roads of Aragon. On Saturday alone, the athletes faced more than 330 sporting kilometers, which became a serious test for both the equipment and the crews.
B. Vanagas arrived in Spain leading the FIA European Baja Cup overall classification. Third place in the “Baja España Aragón” allowed him to add to his championship points tally and maintain the FIA European Baja Cup leader position before the remaining stages of the season.
In the final season classification, the six best results out of eight stages will be counted, so the fight for the championship title is not over yet.
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