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Welcome back with monthly press of RD Rally Championship!
Last event showed us, that racing has already started. We moved from tarmac to gravel which ended in very interesting part of the season. Different winners, cars failures, mistakes and very close battles.
Round 2 was controlled by Citroen manufacture with
Tor Anders Berven's lead from
Max Racing team, ahead of
Sebastien Levren just by 10 seconds. Thanks to his great performance, he moved up to the third place in the overall standings and reduced
Jakub Sulej's lead and
Sebastien's second place. Even though
Sebastien had 7 stage wins, he couldnt manage to catch
Tor Anders. After stage n°6 was
Sebastien leading with 16 seconds advance, but everything has broken after stage with number 7 - East-West and only thanks to public help he was able to continue. He lost 32 seconds there and lost his lead. He tried to do anything, but wasnt that cool as
Tor Anders for next 3 stages. Upcoming wins didnt help much. He was very sad about with the results and told us "
I was happy with my 2nd place in the first event, because I am not good on tarmac. But I was hopping for a better result in the second event to lead the championship. And I failed."
Third
Dariusz Swiderski was behind them by more then 2 minutes. J
akub Sulej, previous round winner didnt repeat his performance and ended at, not very liked, fourth place with 35 seconds lost. At least one stage win he reached.
Even Premiere league provided us a lot of nerves and open finish. But
Ludovic Cogotti was uncompromising and didnt let any thing to luck. He was very pleased with change to gravel, particularly to Australian environment. He took control under 10 stages out of 12 and managed to build minute and half advance ahead of next
Aaron DeMarre, who surprised with his results (6th in the round 1). Without any bigger mistakes, only with some hesitations in first stage and in fourth Canyon,
Ludovic secures his lead in Premiere league.
Robb Kulcsar ended third, but his second place in the overall standings didnt change.
Aaron jumped up to third and Glenn Morris went to fourth.
Interesting was
Ondřej Kapal's fourth place in Premier, while
Senad Subasic ended fifth. Ondřej told us, that his main objective of the league is to finally beat his main competitor
Senad, who is aiming much higher, to
Ludovic. After round 2 is there only 3 points difference between them.
Team standings lead is in hands of
Project D driving
Sebastien Levret and
Ludovic Cogotti with 86 points. Second are
Lee Palmer and
Ondřej Kapal in
DCS Motorsports with 79 points and top three closes
MotorAG Motorsport,
Robb Kulcsar and
David Zafiu with 63 points.
Two drivers didnt finish the rally -
Sami Pesari didnt manage to get trough stage n°3 and
Steve Bean's Citroen C4 had some oppositions - and with defect in the USA and broken air suction it was over.
For the next rally, we will welcome treacherous Japan and fast Finland. Race director
Rick Bamford provided us some informations again:
The opening day is looking like good weather on some of the fastest, flowing roads we have to offer. The big test will be stages 2 & 5, Perrogney. This is a stage new to the drivers and at over 14kms will sort out the men from the boys.
Overnight rain will turn the second days stages slippery and morning fog could cause an issue for those not familliar with the roads. The stages are quite different to day one with the tight and twisty Tanner and Pirka Menoko to make the drivers really work hard at the wheel.
Round 3 sees the weather starting to change again. We also see some of the longest stages in the championship that will test all of the drivers. Especially Noiker will be trying to wreck each driver out.
There are some changes for the next round also:
New driver,
Gaëtan Legastelois, joined
Eckhart von Glan in
Team Blue Flag Racing.
Warren Dawes got new offer from Peugeot and switched car to 2005 Peugeot 307 WRC.
Thats all for now, we will as usual inform you about anything whats gonna happen.
Best wishes to all participants for the next round!