Jos finishes fifth in Rallye du Valais in Switzerland

Published on 26 October 2024 by Misha van der Kroon

On Friday and Saturday, Jos Verstappen and co-driver Renaud Jamoul participated in the challenging Rallye du Valais in Switzerland. The 52-year-old driver finished in fifth place in his Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 car. They lost a lot of time on the last stage due to a flat tyre, resulting in a fifth place in the overall standings.

On both Friday and Saturday, three different special stages were driven, each of which was driven twice. So, the drivers had to do six stages per day, twelve in total. Jos ended the Friday in a good fifth place in the overall standings, 1:17 minutes behind the Swiss Jonathan Hirschi and navigator Mélanie Tendille.

On Saturday, the first stage was from Les Valettes to Champex (9.8 km). Then the stage La Montoz – La Côt (9.4 km) and the third one of the day was Vollèges – Martigny, which was by far the longest stage at 29.7 km. Jos felt more and more at home in the Swiss mountains and scored P4, P5 and P5 on the first round. That brought him to a fourth place overall.

As usual, Jos was able to convert the experience gained in the first round into speed in the second round, and the Dutchman set the third and fourth fastest times. However, the duo had bad luck on the last stage. A flat tyre caused a time loss of about two minutes, and they ended that stage in P22. For the overall standings it meant that Jos was set back to fifth place.

Despite the bad luck, the duo looks back with satisfaction on a solid debut in Switzerland. When the final classification of the Rallye du Valais was drawn up, the duo Verstappen and Jamoul eventually finished 4:04 minutes behind the winners Hischi and Tendille.