Rally championships of Estonia and Latvia were opened by Rally Sarma 2016 in Latvia, and one of the winners of the rally was Estonia’s Gustav Kruuda, Karl Kruuda’s little brother.
Gustav’s class, R2, had big competition, from the quite experienced Nikolay Gryazin to fresh Estonian Dmack Trophy champion Miko Niinemäe, but he kept them all behind him from day 1. Gustav had a chat with rally.ee and told them next:
“Actually, our time from the very first stage came as a surprise for us,” said Gustav Kruuda, who managed to up themselves to 8th position overall by the end of day 1: “I saw some mistakes in my driving, that’s why it was so surprising.”
Gustav Kruuda / Ken Järveoja. Foto: Indrek Allik
Gustav said that the secret to his success may be the extensive training pre-rally:
“Before Sarma I did a lot of training, it developed me and I gained confidence. I got 150 kilometers of training in the rally car and I did lots of driving on ice with a road car.”
He adds that getting used to the car is very important and, in comparison, he highlighted Ken Torn, who was competing in the Fiesta R2 for the first time:
“The Fiesta is a stranger for Ken, he had just 5 kilometers of testing for the rally. It’s tough getting used to the car from the first ignition. No doubt Ken is fast, but the car is different.”
The second day of Sarma was tougher for Gustav and Ken as they had to start from the front, which meant more loose surface:
“Today we had to start from the very front of the list and, because of all the loose snow, it was tough to make good times. Then later on we tried to increase the lead and on the last two stages we managed to control the situation and take a smooth victory!”
All in all, it was a controlled rally for Gustav: “We only did some smaller mistakes. There were no moments of panic. Surprisingly good start to the season!”
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Gustav and Ken made it to the finish in overall 9th position, winning in 3 classes: LRC3, EMV3 and R2.
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