Jos eight after first day Condroz Rally: 'Very satisfied'

Published on 05 November 2022 by Niels Hendrix

Jos Verstappen finished the first day of the Rallye du Condroz-Huy in Belgium in eighth place. The 50-year-old driver entered with the Citroën C3 Rally 2 prepared by DG Sport Competition with co-pilot Renaud Jamoul, who managed to win last year's Condroz Rally with Stéphane Lefebvre.

Jos said to Verstappen.com: "Rally driving is never easy. As always, the stages during the second run were of course different because of all the mud and tracks. Stages are never the same and that makes rallying challenging and exciting. That's what we do it for." Jos, who made his debut in rallying this year, says after the Saturday: "If I compare the second runs with my first, there is a lot of progression there. The more often you drive here, the better it goes. Condroz is one of the most difficult rallies, but I am very satisfied. I'm glad we got through the day in one piece and hopefully we can finish around that eighth spot tomorrow, that would be nice."

The day consisted of five different stages, each of which was tackled twice. During the first run on the special stages Heron, Villers-Le-Bouillet, Ombret-Stree, Marchin-Perwez and Solieres, Jos achieved eighth, twelfth, eighth, eleventh and ninth place respectively. During the second run Jos was able to immediately use his gained experience and finished ninth, twelfth, ninth, seventh and seventh. That brought Verstappen to an overall time of 58:15.9 minutes, which put him 2:27.8 minutes behind Nikolay Gryazin.

This year there was a very exciting battle for the lead position that was settled by Gryazin at the end of Saturday. The Russian rally driver and Lefebvre were very evenly matched and the difference after ten tests was only 2.6 seconds. On Sunday, Jos will continue his way during the remaining eight stages in the Condroz Rally.