Something different

In the European Autocross Championship (EAC) Maggiora in Itlay is a bit like Höljes is to the European Rallycross Championship, a consistently good event on a popular track run by a good organiser. Last year Jos Kuypers, the ERC’s Dutchman who lives in Italy, races on an Italian licence and is a member of Sport Club Maggiora, took his Rallycross to the EAC event and won the closely fought A final. Next month he plans to return to take part in the club’s second annual Super Rally Show, a kind of open house that mixes autocross, rally and Rallycross cars. The event will take place on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 July, with action under floodlights on Friday night when rally cars will run in a pursuit-style event while autocross and Rallycross cars will be started in five-abreast races on the track that will feature a new Joker Lap section. A video of last year’s event is below.

Kuypers had a great run in Austria. © Tim Whittington/RallycrossWorld.com

Looking forward to a ‘home’ event in July, Kuypers is tackling this weekend’s Hungarian ERC round with a clear head, but is still disappointed by the outcome of last weekend’s Autrian event where a jump start in the A final probably cost him his best Supercar finish for years. “It was an old man’s mistake!” he said openly. “The whole weekend was perfect until then, but it was my mistake and I have to live with that. I’m disappointed because it would probably have been my best result, everything was going very well.”

The current system in the ERC is that jump starts in the heats are penalised by the addition of three-seconds to the driver’s race time, but in the final a jump start brings immediate disqualification and Kuypers was removed from the grid and sent to parc ferme after his mistake. “The rules are the rules and I have no problems with that now, but we have had different systems in the past and perhaps it would be better to have something like in the British championship where you go to the back of the grid if you jump the start; you have a penalty but at least you are still in the race. That’s behind me now, I want to try and do well here but it’s a different kind of track, faster. It’s good to drive but you cannot make any mistakes, specially going down the hill…” said Kuypers referring to the demanding downhill section in the middle of the Nyirad lap which incorporates a surface change, a jump and a left-hand bend all taken virtually flat-out.

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[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS83WxqmInQ&feature=youtu.be[/tube]