We met Chafic Boulos for a quick chat ahead of this weekend’s Spring rally, and we talked about his car, his expectation and his preparation. Chafic was present at MotorTune’s test in Arjes last tuesady, so check out what he has to say.
How are your preparations ahead of the rally next weekend?
We haven’t started preparing seriously yet. As everybody knows ATCL have been strict with exploring the road, so we didn’t visit the stages yet. Anyway they will open the roads for us 24 hours ahead of the rally we have all the time in the world to go over the stages nearly 10 times each. This should not be a problem for us Lebanese drivers, if we are looking to improve our level, especially that international rallies prohibit drivers from exploring the stage more than 2 times.
How do find your car especially that you are driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7 and it’s an older generation compared to the cars of your competitors?
The car is 3 generations old, but we worked on improving it as much as possible, by adding several new parts, which helped to increase its performance. The car by itself is a very good car but I cannot claim that it will beat the Evo 10 and Evo 9, although I am confident that it can be very close to the Evo 8.
What are your finishing targets for the Spring rally?
Every driver’s target is to finish on the podium. Last year we were aiming to finish 3rd in the championship but the puncture we had in ROL denied us this chance. This weekend the competition will be very fierce, especially that there are many drivers with much more experience and better machinery like Roger, Nick and Dado. So our realistic target would finishing on the podium or in the top 5.
