Vivacom Rally team driver Dimitar Iliev and his co-driver Yanaki Yanakiev (Skoda Fabia S2000) took their fifth win in the Sliven rally. This is their fourth victory in the Bulgarian championship for the 2011 season.

Vivavom Rally Team's success takes Iliev/Yanakiev very close to winning the championship as they gained 37 (25 for the victory and another 12 bonus points for being 1st and 2nd in the two legs of the rally) more points and have a comfortable lead with 165 points.

Gyoshev and Spasov also took bonus points (12 p.) for being second in Leg 1 and first in Leg 2. With 134 points they keep their second place in the championship where they climbed after the victory in Rally Bulgaria.

There are two more rounds left untill the end of the championship - Stari Stolici and Tvarditsa and with a difference of 31 points the championship winner is still hard to be predicted.

After 230km of special stages and 342km od liasion, Iliev / Yanakiev took 8 stage victories while the other 8 stages victories were taken by Prestige Rally Team driver Petar Gyoshev and his co-driver Dimitar Spasov (Peugeot 207 S2000).

"Prestige" entrants took the second place in the rally finishing 3:23 minutes behind Iliev/Yanakiev. In the final loop of the stages on saturday Gyoshev made a mistake and suffered a puncture which costed the team nearly 3 minutes. This actualy decided the final classification of the rally.

Just before that the 2010 winners of the rall Krum Donchev/Petar Yordanov (Globul Rally Team, Peugeot 207 S2000) were forced to retire due to mechanical problems which was the reason for lots of spectator to leave the stages. Generally most of the competitors concluded that the spectators are less than previous years.

Globul Rally Team's crew is taking third place in the championship standings with 78 points.

The surprise of this year was the local crew Hristo Hristov - Choko/Zlatin Basmadjiev (Bulsim, Citroen Saxo). This was their first start for this year and they undobtfully showed that they can have very few rivals on their theritory. After finishing third in Leg 1 they contuned on the sunday stages with very good pace and took the third place in the final classification. This gave them theit first bonus points in this year (15 + 6 p.) and they climbed in 7th place in the championship standigns with just one rally participation.

Anton Titov/Vencislav Mirchev (Octan Racing Team, Citroen Saxo) also made a good pace and managed to finish 4th on saturday (giving them 2 bonus points) but on the first run of SS Stara Reka on sunday they crashed and had to retire as the car suffered severe damages.

For the first time in the last 20 years the crews who managed to finish the rally are so few. This made the prize giving ceremony one of the shortest ever in the whole history of the bulgarian motor sports.