Tulpenrallye 2022

The story of 2022: The 68th Tulpenrallye started on Sunday 8 May 2022 in Frankfurt, 400 kilometres from Utrecht. In recent years a start so close to home had not occurred. The reason was that this location had been chosen in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, with all the uncertainty of that period. The Veterans class was introduced this year. The Vintage class had attracted fewer and fewer entries in recent years, partly because more and more crews with a vintage car were entering the other competition classes. The Vintage class was open to every competitor with a car eligible to take part in the Tulpenrallye, and had a programme with a shorter route in which a number of connecting sections between the map-reading sections were included. The prologue was once again organised at Autotron in Rosmalen, in collaboration with Autotron Exclusives. Stichting DON (Diabetes Onderzoek Nederland) was the charity supported this year. Gijs van Lennep was once again the ambassador for the charity, and thanks in part to his efforts a cheque for 40,000 euros could be presented at the finish in Valkenburg. This year 179 crews started the rally. That was somewhat fewer than in the years before the pandemic, which had to do among other things with the fact that the previous edition had been run only 6 months earlier. Almost all the crews drove the “Gravenbrucher Tour” on the Sunday, a run laid out by the organisers to get used to the road book, the route controls and the new Rallycheck app. The Rallycheck app was used for the first time this year. While the rally was being driven, use of a mobile telephone was not permitted, and the route controls the crews passed were written down in pen on an RC card. After crossing the finish at lunch and at the end of the day, the crews entered the noted controls through the app. In this way the data reached the Tulpenrallye results office digitally, which allowed it to calculate the first classifications far more quickly. On Monday morning the rally began in earnest. The route ran by way of the finish towns of Karlsruhe, Horbourg-Wihr, Nancy, Luxembourg and Valkenburg. The first rally day, in Germany, produced no classification, as the crews made too few mistakes for that. The route that day was particularly beautiful, through the German Eifel, but the number of navigational challenges was limited, partly because the ever-growing number of roads marked “Anlieger Frei” could not be used. On average an Expert crew collected 81 penalty points that day. For the Expert drivers there was an evening leg on the Wednesday, much of it driven in the dark. This year it was very dark indeed by the time the rally made its way through the vineyards. The average score of an Expert crew that Wednesday was 1,378 penalty points. During the evening leg the route was blocked several times by local residents, and as a result the final part of the route eventually had to be neutralised. The evening leg was talked about long afterwards. The last day was a close-run thing in every class. In the Expert class the gap between the crews of Hans van der Kooij / Bas de Rijk and Jacqueline Donders-Zuiderwijk / Jürgen Donders was only 70 points. That was less than the penalty points for missing a route control, or 35 seconds in a regularity. After a very tense day for both crews — you could read it in their faces — Donders / Donders made too many mistakes, and van der Kooij / de Rijk became the winners of the “Coupe Rallye des Tulipes” in the Expert class of the 2022 Tulpenrallye. They had fought to the last bend of the rally, and were rewarded for it. In the Sporting class Daan van der Vliet and Jord van der Vliet took first place. In the Touring class son and father Floris van Silfhout and Henk van Silfhout won. The Veterans class was won by the experienced crew of Cees Hogendoorn and Cor Verbrugge.