Marcos González and Edu González (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) have not been able to materialize in the 'top five' the great pace shown during the eleventh edition of the Critérium de Málaga Gravel Rally. The Canarian team has seen how all its options for a third podium in the Spanish Gravel Rally Championship evaporated when suffering a puncture in the fifth of the nine sections of this race.
Once again, the Distribuciones Viera driver has emerged from the first bars of this seventh round of the national gravel rally among the best in the overall standings. From the first special shortened to just 3.59 km, González was in fifth position maintaining contact with the team that occupied at that time the third place that, at the same time, is one of his rivals both in the Mitsubishi Evo Cup and in the absolute general of the CERT.
The differences were minimal in that first section despite the Evo IX suffered a slight loss of power due to a problem in the supercharging system that GC Motorsport quickly solved. Therefore, the Canarians went on the attack in the second. They managed to reduce distances with the fourth in the TC4 and were going for it in the next one; but it was then that a puncture in the front right wheel stopped the evolution of this young team that is being the revelation of the season.
With more than a minute lost in sections where it was very difficult to make big differences, from TC6 a new Critérium de Málaga Rally started for them. But the approach was the same, placing immediately behind the teams with superior mounts in each section, they were able to climb in the time that remained until the final seventh place.
"The R5s are going faster and faster every day. Today you had to take many risks to be closer, but even so, the best possible result would have been a fifth or, with luck, a fourth. We have been unlucky because we punctured in the long section and when we still had about six kilometers to go to the finish line. But this reminds us that the CERT is not easy at all and that everything that adds points and experience in our first year is positive", said the driver from Haría at the end of the race, seventh of the eight of the 2016 national season.
Edu González believes that in Málaga it has become clear to what extent the rivals have been reinforced throughout the year. "You have to run a lot to be with them and we have gone to the maximum both in the second and in the third section. I think our place today was the one we were occupying until the puncture. Taking away the puncture, I think we have done a good rally", said the Gran Canarian.
