The 2nd round of the Belgium Championship was held in the Flanders part, the TAC Rally Tielt promised to be very slippery again this year, as it rained the night before the rally.

But rain is Bob Colsoul's best condition to drive in, and that was clear after the first couple of stages.  Bob was fighting with another Evo 10, when in the 4th stage he broke the turbocharger.  Fortunately Bob could drive to the service and made sure Guy Colsoul Rallysport could change the turbo for the first time in our history on the event on an Evo 10. 

Changing the turbo went very well, and Bob went back to the stages to attack, having lost almost 2 minutes due to the turbo.  After a proper and very fast drive, Bob had to be satisfied finishing on the 2nd place in group N, only half a minute behind the winner.

We had more luck in the criterium part, where Kris Cools was simply the fastest in our Evo 10 and won the rally after almost all best stage times.  Our success was made even bigger by Alain Renkin who finished 2nd overall in our Evo 9, after a very fast 2nd half of the rally.

Next rally is the very fast Rallye de Wallonie, a rally that Bob adores, but also a rally in which Bob crashed very hard the last time he drove it.  So fingers crossed, and we are hoping for a group N victory for the leader in the Belgian group N Championship.

Bringing 8 cars at the start of Guy Colsoul Rallysport's homerally, the Rally van Haspengouw, was already a big challenge, 4 cars in the national part, 4 cars in the regional part.

The group N in the national part was won by Stéphane Lhonnay in his very own and well known Evo 9.  The weather and road conditions of this rally, being extremely muddy and slippery limited the lack of power compared to the Evo 10 cars.  And being the fantastic driver he is, everybody knew it would be hard to beat him.

But he didn't have it easy, untill 2 stages from the end, somebody else was leading group N and had a big chance of finishing 3rd overall.  Friends and especially enemies were very surprised to see Bob Colsoul coming back after 2 years of non-activity, and especially seeing him coming back with this efficiency and speed.  The non-driving, a new codriver, new settings on the car made it not easy for him.  Having electronical troubles during the first 2 stages didn't help Bob either.  But his stagetimes in the gravel stage will not be forgotten very soon.  A 3rd overall time, only 0.9 seconds behind a '08 Focus WRC shows who was the fastest driver of them all on this stage...

Behind Stéphane and Bob, Marc Streel in another Evo 10 finished 3rd group N.  It wasn't an easy rally for Marc, and he is happy to finish in this position and without any damages after driving his spectacular style.

The 4th car in the national rally was driven by his owner, Yves van Colen.  Unfortunately Yves got surprised in the 2nd stage by a too late braking, and rolled his Evo 10.

In the regional part, called criterium, none of our 4 cars got the victory.  Although JY Laruelle was leading by almost 2 minutes, he hit the suspension hard on the gravel stage, and broke a brakeline. He decided to retire as he still had to drive a complete stage without brake.

Other criterium specialist, Alain Renkin, was forced to retire 2 stages before the finish and being 3rd overall, with a broken spark plug.

Newcomer, and driving his very 1st rally ever, Eddy Vandevelde started too optimistic in the 1st stage and got surprised by the slippery roads.  He got out too wide of a corner and broke a rear wheel.

But probably the fastest driver in criterium was Kris Cools in our Evo 10.  If he didn't had a puncture in the beginning of the rally, he would certainly have won.  Coming back after the puncture from 19th position to 4th position was a fantastic thing to see.