The stage in Zarasai is special because participants compete right in the city center, surrounded by a beautiful park and historic buildings. Usually known for its speed, the track this year became much more technical, which was clearly reflected by the penalties appearing next to drivers’ track times for knocking over cones or failing to complete the course. Even very experienced athletes made mistakes, so the results achieved last Saturday were truly intriguing.
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Slalom in Zarasai, surrounded by lakes, is held for the third time. This wonderful location in the city center offers not only enviable scenic beauty but also adds more spice to the competition.
The Zarasai region is very hilly, and although the main street is relatively flat, there is some relief. Since Zarasai residents and visitors use the road daily, there are plenty of challenging “attributes” – small potholes or curbs that strictly limit the road. These elements have little impact on regular cars, but cars prepared for slalom and their drivers need to adapt to them. For the first two years, Zarasai was known for having a track configuration close to “Street race” series tracks due to its speed.
This year, the organizers placed cones much more technically on the main and surrounding streets, which immediately reflected in the number of penalties. However, this year the championship races were somewhat eased for the athletes – previously, in one stage, racers completed two different track configurations twice each. This year, cones were not rearranged in the middle of the competition – participants had to complete all four scoring runs on the same configuration, and the result was calculated from the three best runs.
It would seem that with each run, track completion times should have improved as the track was better learned. For some racers, this was true, but for others, the opposite sometimes happened. Good track knowledge meant pushing oneself and the car to the limits of speed, precision, and grip, and when crossing those limits, dozens of cones flew sideways from car touches, so the judges working on the track had plenty of work.
There was also plenty of activity for the nearby restaurants and the youngest event guests, who also drove around cones on a specially made track with a children’s electric car. Nearly a hundred participants with a wide variety of equipment gathered for this one-day car sport event in Zarasai – from regular BMWs to Toyota GR Yaris or the legendary Ford Sierra, which is winning laurels this year.
The complexity of the track is probably best reflected by the fact that only a few participants completed the track without penalties in all four runs. In the front-wheel-drive (FWD) car class, the fight for first place was between Mantas Karženauskas driving a VW Golf and Algirdas Gricius driving a Honda Civic.
Both failed to complete the track once at the start of the competition, and M. Karženauskas also knocked over one cone. However, the stability shown in the third and fourth runs, even with a 5-second penalty, allowed him to beat A. Gricius, who lacked speed in the last run. They were separated by less than a second, and Arnas Jakas with a Renault Clio Sport finished third, six seconds behind. Identical gaps finished the rear-wheel-drive (RWD) representatives. Edvinas Sabalys with a Subaru BRZ won here, beating Darius Morkūnas with a Mazda Miata MX-5 by one second. Both knocked over one cone in their first run and then competed without mistakes. The same scenario was repeated by Majus Braškys with a BMW E46, who finished third, six seconds behind.
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The all-wheel-drive (AWD) class looked the most modest with six participants starting. The fight here was only for second place, as the brightly blue Ford Sierra skillfully driven by Igoris Aleksejevič had no equals. In the AWD class, I. Aleksejevič won with an impressive 46-second lead, and the last, fourth run became a record. 01:24.252 was the fastest track completion time on Saturday, almost a second better than his closest time.
Meanwhile, the fight for second place flared up between Aivaras Valentinavičius driving a Toyota GR Yaris and Laurynas Antanaitis racing in a Mini Cooper JCW. Although the latter showed better results, a penalty load ten seconds greater resulted in third place, although he was only a second short of second place.
In the largest, open class (OC), Edvinas Sabalys with a Subaru BRZ won another main prize, and Darius Morkūnas with a Mazda Miata MX-5 again took the second place trophy, this time trailing by a bit more – 1.4 seconds.
The OC podium was saved from the fate of an identical RWD podium by Mantas Karženauskas, racing a front-wheel-drive VW Golf and winning that class. He was 4.3 seconds short of victory in the OC class.
The women’s competition was also fierce – Greta Šaduikytė driving a Mazda Miata MX-5 won here with a margin of just 2.3 seconds, beating Gintarė Kiselienė with a Toyota MR2. Sandra Grigaitytė with a Mitsubishi Colt was just a few seconds short of a better result. Among juniors, the championship leader Majus Braškys with a BMW E46 was unbeatable, beating teammate Klaudijus Poška, also driving a BMW E46, by almost 19 seconds. Dovydas Kasperavičius with a Mitsubishi Colt, who finished third, was 13 seconds short of second place.
Deimantas Pyragas with a BMW 323 climbed to the top of the guests’ classification podium, beating Deividas Kimsas with an Audi TT by more than a minute. In third place was Agnė Vičkačkaitė with a Dacia Sandero, who has recently been serving as an observer at LASF competitions. The team classification was won by the motorsport club “LADASPORT,” scoring 52 points and beating VšĮ “Jakų ASK” by just three points. Symbolically, the team “Three and a Half Valves” took third place with 34 points.
The fifth stage of the Lithuanian Slalom Championship will take place in Panevėžys on September 6 and will finish on October 10 in Šiauliai.
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