Countdown to Rally Bulgaria



The 2010 Rally Bulgaria will take place between July 9-11 around Borovets in the Rila Mountains in southwestern Bulgaria, the country's oldest winter resort.

About 300 000 spectators are expected to watch this year's event which this year will make its debut in the World Rally Championship.

Preparations are almost complete and the practice runs for Rally Bulgaria have started, according to Dnevnik daily. Organisers maintain everything is ready for what will be the Seventh Round of the World Rally Championship.

Serious obstacles stood in the way of this year's event, which is the 41st Rally Bulgaria rally event overall, but "
with moral and financial support from the state, preparations are now complete"
.

The Sports Ministry has shared the cost, although Minister Svilen Neikov has declined to disclose the nature of the assistance.

Rally Bulgaria is part of the 2010 calendar. It is still not clear if it will continue into the future. It was agreed to stage the Bulgarian and Polish events on a rotational basis. Poland was initially scheduled to be included in the 2011 calendar but then cancelled, while the Bulgarian one is due to be staged again in 2012.

The Rally has a total length of 1068km comprising a total 14 stages (353km) all of them in asphalt, reports said.

I read a report that Kimi Raikonen thought he had an advantage as so much was on tarmac ...

... he's obviously not aware of the state of the 'tarmac' in Bulgaria [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

France's Loeb Takes the Lead in Rally Bulgaria

Citroen's Sebastien Loeb has proved to be the quickest Friday monrning on Rally Bulgaria, the seventh round in the 2010 World Rally Championship.

Loeb was the fastest in both stages - 8.6 seconds up on Dani Sordo in the 31.77 kilometre-run through Batak Lake, before beating Petter Solberg by 5.9 seconds in the 27.57 kilometre Belmeken Lake. He now heads into the mid-day service with a 16 second cushion.

Frenchman Loeb is hoping to take another major step towards a seventh successive world rally drivers' championship as he heads into this weekend's Rally of Bulgaria.

Loeb has won three of the six rallies so far this season and has a 38-point lead at the head of the World Rally Championship.

Some 300,000 spectators are expected to turn out to watch Rally Bulgaria, which this year will make its debut in the World Rally Championship.

The rally will take place July 9-11 around Borovets, Bulgaria's oldest winter resort which hosted Alpine ski World Cup races in the 1980s.

Rally Bulgaria is the first of the four tarmac events in the second half of the 2010 WRC calender.

The Rally has total length of 1068,30 km with 14 Special Stages (353,34 km) all in asphalt. Its route is very compact and selective and it passes trough the beautiful Bulgarian scenery.

[size=85:2lxbkast]Sofia echo 16 July 2010

One of a kind

As far as the Bulgarian fans of motor sports and speed are concerned, having been subjected to a month of the carnival celebrating football in South Africa, Rally Bulgaria came along as a breath of fresh air. No more tame vuvuzela drone, but the roar of the engines, the smell of exhaust and a chance to spend the day outdoors, enjoying top-class driving. Then again, for those who happen to be football fans but also have an affiliation for speed, Christmas really did come early in July.

Rally Bulgaria made its début in the World Rally Championship, having been approved as an addition to the 2010 calendar in September 2009. The event was held on July 9–11 near Borovets, the mountain resort 70km south of Sofia. Despite some problems early on, the event was staged successfully in the end, doubling as the third round of the Junior World Rally Championship.

What will be remembered in particular about Rally Bulgaria is that it marked the indisputable domination of the Citroen C4 WRC car, the vehicle of choice for the top four drivers in the final standings and the first time one manufacturer dominated an event to such an extent since 1993, when Toyota scored a similar result in the Safari Rally.

The rally was won by six-time world champion, Frenchman Sebastien Loeb, who holds the record for most wins in the series and most consecutive wins in a rally season. Second was Loeb's teammate Dani Sordo of Spain, followed by Norway's Petter Solberg and Sebastien Ogier of France.

Loeb was unstoppable and took his fourth win of the season and the 58th of his illustrious WRC career, building up an early lead by taking each of the first five stages. His lead would hold for the rest of the race and he finished 29.5 seconds ahead of his closest pursuer, Sordo. Following a tense final-day contest for second place, Citroen privateer Solberg eventually had to settle for the last place on podium, 6.8 seconds behind Sordo.

The large scale of the event, a span of 1068km, including 14 special stages (353km), all of them in asphalt, raised serious concerns pertaining to spectators’ safety. Even so, the seventh stage was cancelled after a huge number of spectators tried to reach the finish area, following the recommendation of an FIA delegate monitoring the situation from a helicopter.

But if Loeb was visibly delighted with the result, which extended his lead in this year's drivers standings and took his streak of consecutive wins in all-asphalt rallies to 16, Bulgarian drivers had plenty of reasons to be frustrated, not all of them concerning their performance.

Five Bulgarian drivers had been excluded from the rally by FIA for using a different fuel type than the kind mandated by WRC, Dnevnik daily reported. Prior to the event, Bulgaria's motorsport federation decided to include the event in the domestic rally championship, saying that it had an "
oral agreement"
with the FIA to allow Bulgarian drivers to compete with an exemption from the WRC rules.

Thus, Petar Gyoshev, driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9, who set the pace for Bulgarian drivers, was not allowed to finish the rally and the highest-placed Bulgarian was Todor Slavov, on a Renault Clio R3, who finished 16th overall and third among junior pilots.

But even with this organisational mishap, Rally Bulgaria could be considered a qualified success, placing the country on the map for motorsport aficionados, although it would matter little should the race lose its place on the WRC calendar.

Initially scheduled to alternate with Rally of Poland, which has been reported to have run into its own problems, Rally Bulgaria's continued inclusion on the WRC calendar remains in doubt, as alluded to by the review on the WRC website: "
It's almost certain that Bulgaria will be a one-off, as there are no plans to bring it back in 2012."


But with the Bulgarian Government stepping in to share costs this year, a repeat remains in the realm of possibility. After all, as the same WRC review put it: "
And on which other event do you get to see two Russian tanks when you drive to service in the morning?"