Although the final result could have been much brighter, Yeray Lemes and Rogelio Peñate return to the Canary Islands with their morale intact after the Rally de Portugal, the first of the five scoring events of the Drive DMACK Fiesta Cup. The Auto-Laca Competición team has been able to recover up to fifth place final of this new single-brand cup in the three sections of the third and last stage. And this despite suffering problems in the gearbox of their car from the start, a failure that has not prevented them from getting one more scratch, the fourth.
With the rear axle of their Ford Fiesta R2 that was damaged by a rock on Saturday afternoon already repaired, from the first pass through the section of 'Loulé' (13.83 km) the Lanzarote native and the Gran Canaria native reappeared among the two fastest teams in the Drive DMACK. The idea, as they had warned the day before, was to be able to gain some position and obtain a scratch with which to expand their points income in this rally.
But it was not going to be easy, even more so when the gearbox of their car began to fail when second gear was engaged. "That gear jumped and that, in addition to making us lose some time in some areas also distracted us a lot", explains Lemes, who despite this was remained close to the best record.
It also affected their performance in the next one, the 'Brás del Alportel' (16.21 km), but in the repetition through 'Loulé', in the sixteenth and last section of the rally, the Canarians were once again the best in their category. A new scratch that was added to the three previously achieved. Four points therefore to add to those of the final fifth place obtained just a few seconds from the third.
The victory has been very close, but the Auto-Laca Competición team has more than enough reasons to be optimistic about the rest of the year. "When we have pushed we have been in the lead and, sometimes, taking differences. We already knew that it was a rally to take care of the car and dodge stones and that is what we have done during a large part of the stages, but what happened happened what happened in TC12 and what we have to see is that we have added four extra points and that the one who has added the most by scratch has one more than us", explains the Lanzarote native.
What Lemes and Peñate also have no doubt is that it is going to be a very close season in the Drive DMACK Fiesta Cup. "With Suárez we have been to the tenth. Marius Assen, Max Vatanen and Quentin Gilbert have also won sections, but it was with 'Cohete' that we were playing the rally until that twelfth section. We are satisfied with our role and now we have to try to arrive as prepared as possible to the Rally of Poland", explains the co-driver from Santa Lucía de Tirajana. That second round of the cup will have place from June 26 to 29 and, again, on land. There will still be the rallies of Finland, Germany and Spain.
At the Rally de Portugal Yeray Lemes and Rogelio Peñate have had the sponsorship of Auto-Laca, Lanzarote, Costa Teguise, the RACC, the Federation of Motoring of Las Palmas and the Government of the Canary Islands.
