There was more success for MML Sports-run cars this weekend, as Mark van Eldik finished the first round of the Belgian Rally Championship, Rally van Haspengouw in second place. Team-mate Bert de Jong finished in seventh in his first event in the Lancer WRC, rounding out an excellent weekend of action for the Rugby-based squad.
Van Eldik began the event by setting the pace and took the win on the event’s first stage and with it, the early lead. However, this was soon to ebb away, as he first spun then stalled his Mitsubishi Lancer WRCar, losing valuable time in the process.
This allowed Pieter Tsjoen in the 2008 Ford Focus WRC to assume the lead and despite a stage-by-stage battle between van Eldik, Tsjoen and Patrick Snijers in the Subaru WRCar, van Eldik was unable to claw back the lost time and went on to finish the event in second place.
Team-mate Bert de Jong was contesting his first event at the wheel of the MML Sports Mitsubishi Lancer WRCar and began well, holding fourth overall after the third stage. However, as he was taking his time to settle into the car and was taking no risks, the far more experienced competition soon began to show their advantage with more time in their cars. Despite a string of excellent stage times, his overall position began to receed and he finished the event in seventh place, a result he was very pleased with, on his first event in the Lancer.