The Rallye Breslau which was once postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, was finally held in the mid-September in Poland. Here they had to overcome 1000 kilometres through forests, sand as well as difficult tank training grounds off-roads ruined by tanks.
CFMOTO Factory Racing Team performed successfully in this race. Although the team did not make it to winners podium, the organisers were challenged to pronounce the Lithuanian surnames for a few times.
To participate in Rallye Breslau race, CFMOTO Factory Racing team delegated two fighter vehicles - CFORCE 1000 ATV, driven by Adomas Gancierius and the new ZFORCE 1000 Sport SSV with the family duo Antanas and Audrone Kanopkinai.
The team travelled to Poland with only two days left until the race. After coming to Gwda Wielka town, the team started the preparations. The same day, overcame the formalities successfully - they received permission to start by the administration as well as the technical committee. Besides, the pre-start procedures were going rather easily this year; however, after the last year’s debut in Rallye Breslau race and the remarks made by the organisers, this year, all the necessary technical improvements were completed, therefore the green light was instantly lit for the team’s start.
There was 1000 km speed section awaiting the team and 500 km was foreseen for the passage crossings in this race, therefore it required a certain amount of endurance for the participants and their vehicles.
The two speed sections were prepared for the first day. The participants had to overcome almost 130 km and almost as much in passage crossings. The first day of Rallye Breslau was going well for the ATV driver CFMOTO Factory Racing Team. Adomas Gancierius. The racer with his CFMOTO CFORCE 1000 ATV demonstrated the fourth time of the track in the first speed section and finished second in the second speed section.
Combining the results of both speed sections, Adomas Gancierius was classified as the winner of the second place in ATV class among the 22 participants.
At the same time, in the SSV class, the duo of Antanas and Audrone with their CFMOTO ZFORCE 1000 SPORT experienced some difficulties on the track, including poor navigation and technical errors. Therefore, the first speed section was like a cold shower for them.
On the second day, the organisers offered the athletes two extra-long speed sections with a combined length of 230 kilometres. After that day, CFMOTO Factory Racing Team’s duo Antanas Kanopkinas and Audrone Kanopkiniene stated that the distance was long and tiring, therefore in the second speed section, the athletes started counting the kilometres left until the finish line.
However, the tandem driving CFMOTO ZFORCE 1000 SPORT SSV was not only fast, but also managed to avoid bigger technical problems. Therefore, the mechanics did not have to work overnight like they had to after the first and not a very successful day.
The second day of the rally was a bit worse than the first one for CFMOTO Factory Racing Team’s ATV driver Adomas Gancierius. He started leading the high pace to his opponents again from the very start but then had to make an unplanned stop. The tie rod not withstand the shock caused by the Holes and high jumps, so it had to be changed right away on the track. As it turned out later, it was the reason why Adomas Gancierius wastelost his time, which cost him third place on the podium in the final ATV class standings.
On Thursday, the participants of the Rallye Breslau overcame the third day of the competition out of five scheduled. This time, the two-speed sections of the day were a bit shorter and had an extremely high average speed.
The fact that the third day of the competition was extremely fast was confirmed by both the duo of Antanas and Audra Kanopkins, who were racing in the CFMOTO ZFORCE 1000 SPORT SSV, and Adomas Gancierius, who was driving the CFMOTO CFORCE 1000 ATV.
According to the team members, the speed section this time was not characterised by difficult navigation and was not very long - only 108 km in total.
Both, Adomas Gancierius and the family duo of Antanas and Audra Kanopkinai demonstrated a high pace on the track. However, they latter were stopped by a broken CVT belt. They had to stop to handle the breakdown and that is how the crew lost a few precious minutes.
Athletes who spent half a day on the track finally turned to Gwda Wielka bivouac for the last time. There they packed their belongings and went to the town of Drawsko Pomorskie, a hundred kilometres away, where the continuation of the marathon day was waiting for them that same evening - a 60-kilometre-long night speed section.
The participants in the night speed section faced great challenges because there they had to race with lights to cut through the darkness. The visibility here was also worsenes by the dust, which was extremely high in some places because the wind in the forests could not disperse them. The organisers also added wet and viscous sections to this cocktail, so the military grounds in rally Rallye Breslau revealed its full character to the participants.
However, the duo of the CFMOTO Factory Racing Team Antanas and Audra Kanopkinai coped with the night challenges rather well. They practically managed to avoid mistakes, and the pace demonstrated lifted them to unprecedented heights - the second position in the class among the 38 participants. After this result, the crew received some exclusive attention from the organisers - the team members stood in front of the cameras of official rally journalists to talk about their driving equipment and the astonishing result achieved with competitors driving several times more expensive, more powerful and in theory, more advanced equipment. They had dozens of riders behind them, riding SSVs, such as the Can-Am Maverick X3 or the Polaris RZR 1000 Turbo.
Unlike the SSV crew, the ATV driver Adomas Gancierius experienced a more difficult night speed section. After seeing his mistakes in navigation - he had to turn around a few times and return to find the right path. According to Adomas Gancierius, the landfill at night is very flawed, because there are plenty of adjacent roads and it is very easy to go in the wrong direction.
After the night speed section, the participants, who had slept only for a few hours in the morning, stood at the start in the fourth day’s speed sections again. More than 200 combat kilometres awaited them there at the largest military training ground in Europe, on the outskirts of Drawsko Pomorskie, full of the tracks left of tanks and other military equipment.
The fourth day of the Rallye Breslau race was divided into two-speed sections - 117 and 93 km long. Between them, participants had time to return to bivouac for a short stop. Many took advantage of this break solely to have mechanics inspect the vehicle after the first speed section. Immediately after that, the teams moved to the start of the second speed section.
The CFMOTO Factory Racing Team duo with the ZFORCE 1000 Sport SSV experienced a misfortune here. After a very severe crash into the unmarked pit, the SSV had damaged heir suspension - the front their fork was broken.Antanas and Audrone Kanopkinai, who took a second place in the class in the night speed section, had to forget about the high position this time and decide how to reach the finish line that day in general.
The day for CFMOTO Factory Racing Team’s ATV rider Adomas Gancierius went well without any major problems. Although he did not win any of the speed sections, he was in the first place in the ATV class in terms of the overall result of the day. This was achieved by a stable result of both speed sections, which Lithuanian opponents failed to demonstrate.
CFMOTO Factory Racing Team's ATV driver Adomas Gancierius demonstrated the fourth result on the last day. In the same position, he finished the show in the final standings of the Rallye Breslau ATV class, where more than 20 ATVs participated.
Adomas Gancierius was only fifteen minutes behind to stand on the podium. The racer opened up about his resentment as more than twenty minutes had been wasted at the start of the race when he had to change a broken Tie rod end ,on the track. As it turned out, this was exactly what cost the CFORCE 1000 ATV athlete third place as he finished fourth.
On the last day of the rally, the duo of Antanas and Audrone Kanopkinai rode the CFMOTO ZFORCE 1000 Sport SSV fast. After the incident on that evening, they significantly worsened their positions and on Friday, they had an important task - to overtake the crews who started ahead, driving more powerful equipment, but made a lot of mistakes in navigation.
After summing up the results of all speed sections, the crew took 12th place in the final standings. Before the competition, the team declared that their goal was TOP 10. Such an even higher result would have beed possiblebut one incident on the fourth day of the rally shattered the team's hope of being in the TOP 10.
However, the team claims that with each competition ,they gain more and more experience, better understand the limits of technical possibilities, so they believe all victories and podiums to be in the future.
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