2013 Internationale Jänner Rallye

The January 30th Rally, officially 30th International January rally was held in Freistadt in Austria from 3rd to 5th January 2013. She was the first running of the European Rally Championship in 2013 and also was part of the Austrian Rally Championship, Historic Rally Championship as well as the Czech Rally Championship.

• 4.1 European Rally Championship
• 4.2 Austrian Rally Championship

Background

The total length of this year's January rally was 825.3 km. The program consisted of 18 special stages, ten of them on the first day and eight on the second day. The total distance of the special was 248.34 km, which were held exclusively on paved roads. There were a total of 97 vehicles at the start.

The German Hermann Gassner sen. as well as the Czechs and Jiri Tucek Marcel Petrasek have not been approved by the FIA Stewards of the rally, as they had presented a non- homologated vehicle model. Due to time constraints was not the former Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica, who participates in the European Rally Championship in 2013, the first European race of the season at the start.

Course of the rally

Shakedown

Before the scheduled shakedown about 1.99 km to the Freistädter Trölsberg there was a strong freezing rain in the afternoon that caused difficult conditions for all participants. The Czech Jan Kopecky won with 1:11,3 minutes shakedown and was 1.2 seconds faster than the Frenchman François Delecour. With only two tenths of a second behind the Frenchman Beppo Harrach took the third place.

Day 1

All participants had to deal with the first three special stages on difficult track conditions. January Kopecký decided on the first special for the risk variant and scored with wide studded tires the first fastest time. However, he could go on the special two and three only the 19 and 22 period. Raimund Baumschlager had already after the first special one minutes behind, with narrow tires, however, he could make up ground at the next examination and won the second special stage. Simon Wagner surprisingly won the third special. Vaclav Pech had to fight on wide tires again and again with the ice and came off on the third special stage of the route. After the first three special stages, he finished behind tree hit the third. Harrach was only 14.1 seconds behind the Czechs finished fourth. After the fifth special tree hit was in the lead, but an examination later took over again Kopecký the top.

On the eighth special stage of the day drew to a dense fog, when the driver Jan Kopecký, Bryan Bouffier, Raimund Baumschlager and François Delecour had already completed their journey. All other later launched driver suffered because of poor visibility large residues. The ninth and penultimate special stage of the day was won by the Czech Václav Pech, it was his first and only victory in this rally special stage. His lead on this special was very large, so that only the overall leader Kopecky and Bouffier and Baumschlager could ride to victory. Many drivers used on the tenth and last special Intermediate tires, others drove with rain tires going on. January Kopecký finished the first day at 20.2 seconds ahead of Bryan Bouffier and 38.9 seconds before the tree hit. Overall, there were recorded on the first day very many failures. These concerns were, among others, the Austrian Simon Wagner, who crashed into a house wall and after a tire change initially was able to continue, until finally forced him to give up the motor from overheating. With an electronic defect also different from the poles Michał Sołowow, had Martin Semerad, Kris Rosenberger, Michael Böhm and David Glachs the race prematurely with an engine failure.

Day 2

After the turbulent weather conditions the first day it rained all day Saturday over at relatively mild temperatures. On the second day the trio moved Kopecký, tree and hit Bouffier it by a large margin. On the 15th special stage Kopecký had a puncture and lost about a minute, so Bouffier took the lead. From then on it remained until the finale a close duel between Kopecký and Bouffier. The Czechs were missing 10.6 seconds on Bouffier. On the 18th and last special stage itself Kopecký then took the lead and secured with a lead of 0.5 seconds Bouffier overall victory in the January rally in 2013. Kopecký repeated so that last year's victory. Baumschlager concentrated on the second day to defend the third place, and succeeded him. The three-time winner Václav Pech took the fourth place. The Austrian Beppo Harrach had transform your car setup. After that, it was better for him, he was able to improve from seventh to fifth place and in the end had 1.1 seconds ahead of Poland Cajetan Kajetanowicz. The 2WD competition was won by the German Hannes Danzinger with co-driver Kathi Wüstenhagen.

Stages

Results

European Rally Championship

Austrian Rally Championship

Reporting

The television station showed the euro sports highlights of the January rally in 2013.