Cristina Gutiérrez returns to action at the Andalucía Rally, fourth round of the FIA World Championship for Cross-Country Rallies. The Burgos woman, like the rest of the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team, will be present at the event that takes place between June 7 and 12 and has Dos Hermanas and the Gran Hipódromo de Andalucía as its epicenter. An event of very pleasant memories for Gutiérrez for the change in his sporting career that the first edition of the test meant. Also, in his second participation he managed to win his first test in the World Cup.
The 2021 edition of the Andalucía Rally was tremendously special for ‘Tortu’. The Spaniard achieved victory in the T3 category, a result that greatly boosted the Burgos-born to win the Rally-Raids World Championship title in this class. A year earlier, in 2020, Cristina contested the event with an X-Raid MINI ALL4 Racinga vehicle with which she finished eighth, a result that somehow allowed her to attract the attention of Lewis Hamilton and Sébastien Loeb and opened the doors of Extreme E and the Red Bull team.
The Andalucía Rally 2022 will also have that special touch, among other things because it will be a reunion event for Cristina Gutiérrez. The Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team has undergone a minor restructuring. Guillaume de Mevius’s usual co-driver has become part of the Dakar organization, so François Cazalet will join the Belgian, since both can communicate in French. Thus, Cristina Gutiérrez will have as a new co-driver an old acquaintance of the fans, Pablo Moreno Huete.
This is how she explains it Cristina Gutierrez: «Guillaume De Mevius was looking for a co-driver with whom to communicate in French. We had several meetings with the team and in the end they saw that the most settled thing was for François Cazalet, my co-driver, to join Guillaume. That’s why, I have decided to embark on a new path together with the one who was my co-driver during two editions of the Dakar, Pablo Moreno Huete. Pablo is young, he has great motivation and besides being a great co-driver he is a great mechanic. Speaking the same language is a great solution. I think it will be a very good change».
Regarding his participation in the Andalucía Rally, ‘Tortu’ adds: «The four teams of the Red Bull Junior Team will be in Andalusia, competing for the T3 category. It will be a fun challenge. The race this year is going to be a bit of adaptation, but we are going to try to fight at the highest level. The co-driver change occurred a month agoso we have worked on adapting outside the car as quickly as possible. We have to be patient because we have to overcome this period of adaptation. We will have time to train and we will arrive at the Dakar in better conditions.”
Photos: Cristina Gutierrez