Sulingen, Germany – The new season of the ADAC Opel Electric Rally Cup kicked off with an exciting and demanding opening event at Rallye Sulingen. Johannes Wittenbeck and Maximilian Kugler from the Infypower chargebyte e-Rally Team achieved a solid 6th place among the 15 international teams that started – a promising beginning to the 2025 season.
Friday initially did not go as planned: a rather cautious driving approach on the first special stages cost valuable seconds, but the team carefully worked its way into the rhythm. “I don’t want to blame it entirely on the wrong tire pressure, which I misjudged on Friday. I simply took far too long to find the limit of the car again, where we had already been consistently operating before the long winter break last season. I was really not satisfied with that,” Wittenbeck said, critically assessing his start to the rally. After the first day, they returned to Parc Fermé in 11th place.
However, by Saturday, the two had significantly improved and found their way back to the pace they had established last year. Particularly noteworthy was their smart driving on the famous IVG stage, a 24-kilometer section across a former World War II military area. The terrain is characterized by countless junctions, varying road surfaces, harsh asphalt edges, and narrow passages through old bunker structures – an extreme challenge for both driver and co-driver. “Especially in the IVG area, we acted very wisely, avoided critical mistakes, and still maintained very high speed in the other sections,” praised co-driver Maximilian Kugler. The teams had to master this demanding stage twice over the weekend, making concentration, good overview, and precise pace notes absolutely crucial.
As a result, the duo had reduced their average time gap to the leaders to about 0.7 seconds per kilometer in the second half of the rally – a small margin in the world of rallying and a strong performance to build upon. The international competition from seven nations is extremely tight this year. In the end, the team finished with a total time of 1 hour, 16 minutes, and 48 seconds – just 92 seconds behind the victorious Spanish team of Álex Español and Borja Odriozola. Maximilian Kugler also looked back positively on the weekend: “The season opener was demanding, but we gained valuable experience that we can build on. Now we are looking forward to the next challenges!” The focus now turns to the next event: in less than four weeks, the team will head to the Netherlands for the ELE Rally.