Last weekend 19 competitors contested the 2022 Rallye Defi OPRC event in Montpellier, Quebec. Taking the overall win on the saturday, by a margin of over 2 minutes, was Olivier Martel & codriver Vincent Hubert. This win extends Martel's lead in the Championship to 21 points, but with double points available at Tall Pines with the 2 individual OPRC events to round off the season, it isn't done and dusted just yet.
Unfortunately Matthew Ballinger, who was challenging Martel for the overall OPRC title, suffered a big off on the first stage with both he and codriver Bruce Leonard ok following the incident. Having already completed the 8 stages on the previous day for the CRC event, this ended their OPRC competition early. Dave Cyr - his first time at Rallye Defi as a driver - and codriver Amelie Belanger took 2nd OPRC while Dmitri Kishkarev & codriver Michael Szewczyk overcame transmission issues & a broken strut to take 3rd.
Top 2WD honors for the event go to Kurtis Duddy with codriver Matthieu Toupin in an '04 Nissan Sentra, the pair also took home 2nd 2WD in the CRC event. This win shoots Kurtis to the top of the 2WD OPRC championship leaderboard. Roderick Jones & codriver Sam Roxon took 2nd while Chris Krepski & first time performance event codriver Colin Wolfson, having had some exhaust issues early on in the day, brough home 3rd.
Just over 2 months to go until the last events of the season with the Rally of the Tall Pines at the end of November hosting the Pine Cone & Small Pines rallies. This event - well known for its very challenging, exhausting day - means we still have no idea what the final championship results will look like.
Looking forward to seeing you all out there for the double-header event!