Kees Koolen becomes first W2RC class champion with T5 title

The inaugural World Rally-Raid Championship doesn’t finish till the Andalucía Rally on 18–23 October, however with the T5 class not on the cardboard, Kees Koolen is the primary driver to win a W2RC class championship.

Koolen, driving an IVECO Powerstar for Venture 2030, ends the 2022 season with 186 factors. Martin Macík Jr. was second with 160. His co-driver Wouter de Graaff gained his respective title alongside Paolo Ceci.

Whereas the vehicles of T5 generall normally see respectable turnouts, solely three drivers raced for W2RC factors with Tomas Vratny being the third. Macík completed forward of Koolen on the season-opening Dakar Rally with a seventh in school versus Koolen’s thirteenth. Dmitry Sotnikov of KAMAZ-master gained the Vans at Dakar however was not competing for the W2RC; even when KAMAZ had declared their intention to take action, they’d not have been in a position to proceed attributable to international penalties stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Howveer, Macík failed to complete the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge attributable to a gearbox failure whereas Koolen was thirteenth amongst all FIA entries. Macík rebounded on the Rallye du Maroc final week by successful three of six legs and the general, edging out non-championship driver Gert Huzink for the latter by almost two minutes. Koolen was third forward of Vratny with victories in Stages #3 and #4.

Macík’s Abu Dhabi retirement proved to be the distinction maker as he completed the season with 160 factors. Had Andalucía been on the T5 calendar, he would have one other probability to overhaul Koolen because the winner receives thirty factors. Vratny solely recorded factors in Morocco and ends with 37 whole.

The championship is Koolen’s third on the worldwide degree. In 2017, he gained the FIM Cross-Nation Rallies World Championship within the Quad division, whereas he gained the T4 title within the 2020 FIA World Cup for Cross-Nation Bajas.

Outdoors of racing, the Dutchman oversees inexperienced vitality company Koolen Industries. True to his firm’s mission, his Venture 2030 staff doubles as a analysis mission into different gasoline options. 2030, being the beginning of the subsequent decade, is ceaselessly set because the yr for greener vitality such because the Dakar Rally starting to require all competing vehicles to be zero-emission.