All prepared, with a few changes...

Despite his fantastic start to the season both nationally and internationally, Bernardo Sousa decided to change navigators for the remaining races. He chose Jorge Carvalho, a young man with some experience, in whom the Madeiran pilot seems to have total confidence.

There was no question whatsoever as to the value and fine performance of Carlos Magalhães who had been a perfect team mate since the beginning of the year but Bernardo Sousa decided to choose a new navigator half-way through the season, which may seem somewhat strange. However, the pilot justifies his decision by saying that this may be beneficial for the team:

“Carlos Magalhães was a tremendous help both nationally and internationally. He is a very experienced and very competitive navigator who helped me better than anyone else to progress and achieve the good results obtained up to now.

Even so, I gave this decision a lot of thought after Argentina and I think this is the time to make a change, so I chose Jorge Carvalho, a young man who has already accompanied fast pilots like António Rodrigues or Isaac Portela and who will be my team mate as from now on. We’re now off to the Portuguese Vodafone Rally, a difficult race to start off with but I’m sure everything will turn out fine.


I would like to stress that I have nothing against Carlos Magalhães, to whom I am extremely grateful for all his help during the rallies we raced together and for everything I learned from him. This will certainly be a basis for my whole career, which I hope will be a long one, in which he played an important part. Thank you Carlos!”

Before the Portuguese Vodafone Rally, the team even went on a test drive and completed the Shakedown for the third race of the National Rally Championship.

We’ll be back with more news then.