Husaberg factory rider Joakim Ljunggren is for the first time taking on the Red Bull Romaniacs Rally, also known as "the world's toughest hard enduro rally", this year.

After a short stop-over back home in Sweden after the two EWC rounds in Poland and Slovakia Joakim went straight down to Sibiu, Romania. As a 2-time winner of the famous Novemberkasan and 3rd overall in the 2010 Indoor Enduro Worldcup, Joakim definitely has the technical riding skills and physical condition to conquer this race. The factor of the race he has no experience with is navigation though.

The race started on Saturday with the incity prologue, an Endurocross track built up on Sibiu's main road. In the slippery conditions, due to pooring rain, Joakim took it easy and finished in 13th position. First of all he didn't want to spoil his race with an injury before the rally even really started, and second he wanted to have some riders start in front of him, in order to find some tracks of these riders out in the Romanian woods, so navigation gets less critical.

The thing that spoiled his tactics was the continuing rain. The long uphills became extremely slippery and Joakim had his problems there back in the field. He was struggling and had to take several attempts, so in the end, arriving at the last checkpoint before the finish, he ran out of time and received a huge time penalty. Pretty bad, but only two riders actually made it to the finish in time, so Joakim was in good company. After day 1 he moved up to 9th position overall.

On day 2 the rain finally stopped and also the track was set out a bit "easier". Joakim hurt his leg the day before, so he was not really highly motivated at the start in the morning. Nevertheless he came into a good rhythm right from the beginning and started to push. He overtook a lot of riders and arrived at the service point with the leading riders. He felt good and decided to keep pushing. As he went out front he made a navigation mistake and lost about 15 minutes, which put him back in the pack.
Short before the finish the riders faced some more difficult sections, and that's where Joakim used his skills to work his way up to 2nd place behind the day's winner Andreas Lettenbichler.
As Paul Bolton had problems with his GPS and therefore had to start later than the rest of the Pros, yet made an excellent ride, Joakim finished the 2nd day's stage in 3rd position and moved up to 7th overall halfway through the rally.


"The first day was incredible hard. It was raining all day long and I was not really well prepared. Actually it was harder than I expected it to be. The second day was a lot better. I felt good and was able to push and overtake a lot of riders. I'm really happy with today's 3rd place, because it's the first time I ride a rally like this, with GPS navigation. I only made one small mistake that cost about 15 minutes. The racer is really fun, but it's also really tough!"


To follow the Red Bull Romaniacs Rally go to www.redbullromaniacs.com.


Pics: P. Vuckovic