Tuesday, July 21, 2009

RPMGO.com (former Auto Unleashed)

Posted by rin at 5:22 AM

RPMGO.com (former Auto Unleashed)

Posted: 20 Jul 2009 09:42 AM PDT

I haven’t really been one of the biggest fans of rally racing, but I’ve always considered it to be one of the most fascinating motorsports and I’ve also played a lot of Colin McRae 2 on my PC when I was in college. The way these pilots are able to drive that car is simply amazing and I was able to see that this weekend, when we were invited by Citroen Romania to attend the Sibiu Rally and a couple of special events (Citroen is the official partner of the Rally).

After only two hours of sleep, on Friday morning at around 6:30 a.m. we left Bucharest and drove to Sibiu (which means a 5 hours drive through a very beautiful part of Romania). When we got there, the first event we saw was the super special stage. We weren’t really familiarized with the rules and all, but we did know something…we absolutely enjoyed what we saw and we were really anxious for what was about to happen on Sunday!

Though Sunday went by pretty fast (we attended the official finish and the press conference), we had some great news, which was announced by Ovidiu Mazilu, president of the Romanian Motorsport Federadion: starting next year, the Sibiu Rally will be a stage in the IRC (Intercontinental Rally Challenge), the world’s second rally championship.

And finally Sunday came and the event we were really, really waiting for, which was a ride in the Citroen C2R2 Max. So, for a few laps, we were co-pilots for Phillippe Bugalski, one of the most experienced pilots in the Citroen racing team. He was a really amazing guy, really funny and the ride was…one the coolest things we ever did. Lately, I was considering taking racing driving courses with one of our best pilots here in Romania, but after the Citroen experience this has definitely went up in my priorities list. I can’t imagine how much fun it is to be behind the steering wheel.

Anyway, it’s been a great weekend, we had a lot of fun, we met a lot of new and cool people, including Simon Jean Joseph, former two times European Champion and Citroen’s current Customer Competition Director (he told us a lot about Citroen Racing Trophy, a really amazing European competition for not-so-professional drivers) and we also got a lot of memories and new goals. We’ll also be posting soon interviews with Simon and Phillippe, so stick around, because this will definitely be interesting.