Tag: Gijs van Lennep

Just wanted to share with you the new look of Woodstock. We have taken our logos and had a front hood sticker made to promote TwinSpark Racing. In the Dutch GTTC championship we are allowed to run with “fitting” sponsor decoration, so we designed a period-style striping. Hope you like it. We’ll be running Woodstock on Monday at Spa in this new outfit.

And then its all over, but what a result: after several attempts our sympathetic Dutch racing driver Gijs van Lennep wins The Trial. With British co-driver-navigator Iain Tullie the team took top honors with a minute to spare after 6 days of intense rallying in their 356 C, owned by the State of Art collection. I spoke to Gijs several times before this event and his concerns that another technical problem would strand him in sight of the finish line were countered by rigorous preparation of his car. Engine and gearbox were rebuilt and Gijs felt the car ran wonderfully this time around.

The combination Van Lennep/Tullie was new to the event, but Iain had won the event several years ago with the late Malcolm Pickering, so he knew what he was up against. I asked him after the event how he had prepared [...]

Here’s a little sneak preview of the kind of material you can expect from the Winter Trial 2010 coverage on this blog in the last week of January. This test had a very sharp bogey time and was run on a half wet, half frozen driver education layout somewhere in Czechia. I remember that the parking lot was next to a factory and the fence was lined with spectators during their lunch brake, as we tore up their adjacent driving center.

Mind the hands moving on the steering wheel and you’ll get an idea of how slippery the back part of the little track was. The dip in the middle of the track was very treacherous. If we would have applied more speed we would have understeered over a layer of snow, straight into a wall. The nose of the car became light as we dropped down and I thanked the rally gods for having [...]