With many fans coming on the sea port of Varna started the official ceremony of the 49th Rally Bulgaria. From today to Sunday, 26 crews will fight in the race, which includes 11 special stages.
The start of Bulgaria’s most prestigious rally was given by Mr. Stoyan Passev – Governor of Varna region, the President of BFAS Mr. Dimitar Iliev, as well as the race director Mr. Alexander Kovatchev.
As we said before, Varna is a city, deeply connected with Rally Bulgaria, since the very first years of the race. Till today, one of the special stages – “Aladzha monastery” is stil on the menu, after 49 years.
It will be a big fight – that was the promise of the fastest pilots. The interest is direct to the veterans Dimitar Iliev and Krum Donchev who has won the rally years ago twice. Each of them. Like a pilot. And today thesy started like team and will change the seats in their Mitsubishi Evo 9. And every other crew’s wish was to defeat them.
“Everyone wants to defeat us, so maybe we must go home”, was kidding Dimitar at the ceremony. “Our team has very good pilots, but very bad copilots”, continued he with the joke. But after he and Krum became serious: “We cannot drive slow. But we have serious task and you guys (the competitors) will not have an easy weekend. We will push it to the limit”.
But the overall leaders in the Bulgarian rally championship Miroslav Angelov and Edi Sivov (Skoda Fabia R5) was categorical that they came to win. „We will drive without stress and we will have fun. But we must win” promised Sivov.
Almost the same were the words of the last year rally champion Tihomir Stratiev and his copilot Dobrin Borisov (Peugeot 208 R2). They believe that they can keep the title from the last year Rally Bulgaria. “We will fight, of course, and I want to wish good luck to all my colleagues and successful rally without problems”, said Stratiev.
The Group E leader Kalin Benchev (Subaru) also joked that he came to beat Dimitar and Krum, and after wished good luck to all competitors and wished a good rally for his team.