What an exciting introduction to the World Rally Championship for Belgium so far, and it’s only set to get better with the second day of the iconic Ypres Rally.
Four stages are run twice each on Saturday, and we’ve got Alain Penasse, president of the event organizer Club Superstage, to guide us through what to expect.
SS9/13 Hollebeke (16.07 miles)
This is the longest stage of the rally. It’s a real mix of everything. It’s quite flat, but the road is concrete, really slippery Tarmac then on to some abrasive Tarmac with more grip. The width is changing as well, in some places you can easily pass with two cars, but then we’re also down to some sections where it’s more narrow.
This Hollebeke stage is one of the older, more traditional Ypres Rally stages. We’ve kept that traditional section in, but we have turned it around and we’re running in the opposite direction for the first time.
The reason we’ve turned this one around is to make the general traffic situation better – it helps with the flow for both the competitors and for the fans.
SS10/14 Dikkebus (7.76 miles)
This stage has run in the same format for something like eight years now. This is our live television stage. It starts on a very flat area, but the road is bumpy – we saw [Bryan] Bouffier crash here before. The second half is more hilly, but very, very technical. There are a lot of poles and things on the side of the road, so there drivers have to stay neat and tidy and then decide which corners they can and cannot cut.
SS11/15 Watou (8.46 miles)
A traditional Ypres stage which has been on the itinerary for the last five years. It’s quite nice and fast, but it’s also technical – for me this is one of the most difficult stages of the whole rally. Like I said, it’s fast and bumpy, but it’s also a very complicated to try to read the road. This year we have reduced the stage slightly to include 300 metres of tire warming zone at the start.
SS12/16 Mesen-Middelhoek (4.96 miles)
This is the shortest stage of the loop and starts in the centre of the smallest town in Belgium, Mesen – it’s actually more like a village. After the start from the main square in the town, we do a section on the cobblestones before moving into the fields around the town where the roads are generally a bit faster and more bumpy.
