After the crash of the last rally at Vechtdal, the car of the “HART” HAN Automotive Rally Team was once again freshly painted and ready at the start of the GTC Rally, also known as the Night of Achtmaal. The GTC Rally is typified by the Stage: “The Hell” that circles around the service area and where the participants drive through Achtmaal at full speed.
The sun was still shining in the afternoon on this beautiful Saturday, July 9, 2022.
Equipe Kelvin Schäffers and Matthijs van Hilten were ready for it. They would start with number 208 this afternoon. The recon went well, and nothing indicated what a tough day it was going to be.
The rally
Unsuspectingly, the men started on Saturday. Everything seemed to be going well. The communication in the car was on-point and the rhythm was good. Soon the car started to overheat during the first stage. The driver lifted off the gas immediately to avoid a catastrophic situation.
From that moment on it was survival for the equipe.
Driver Kelvin Schäffers says: "How are we going to do this? I thought out loud. The engine wouldn't cool anymore, not even while driving in the wind. At one point I even thought of putting the car aside because the situation continued, and I wanted to prevent more damage."
Service
Fortunately, the crew managed to get the car through the stages unscathed and to arrive safely at the service. Here the HART service team was able to unleash their magic on the Clio. The entire cooling system was checked and completely vented. During the Service, it was also checked whether the oil cooler was still working properly. The service team concluded that something was not working optimally inside the engine. Unfortunately, the problem could not be solved in the short service time of half an hour.
After service
Kelvin and Matthijs were given specific instructions and had their work cut out for them. It seemed to go well during stage five, but at the end of the stage the car was overheating again. This rally was, for the team, all about too high temperatures under the hood. But also about all the beautiful stories that the equipe was able to tell the team about all the stages and the joy they got by seeing all the people driving through the street during ''the Hell''.
The summer break is now upon us, and HART's priorities are to solve the problems of last rally and see how they can improve the car where necessary.
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