And nothing changed with this year's
rally. If Sebastian Loeb even tried to win the rally on the Friday
(as he usually can and does) he would risk doing as he did in 2009,
crashing out spectacularly. Or knocking a wheel off.
“This rally was so long and
difficult. We had some fortune in the morning, but in general we had
to fight really hard. It was really good. I tried to always keep my
rhythm and do what I felt. I tried to manage the car and the tyres. I
believe that everybody has done a great rally, Mikko, Petter and
Jari-Matti.” said Loeb.
So all he had to do was take it easy,
drive around the rocks and he would be fine? Not really, seeing as he
had an on form Petter Solberg (a former winner) and a returning
Jari-Matti Latvala to contend with. Team-mate Mikko Hirvonen is
always a threat on gravel, but chances are he would have been told to
let Loeb win and not risk causing a crash, or damaging his
team-mate's chances of a ninth title.
During Day 1, no driver stood out as a
clear leader. Okay, Loeb extended his lead up to 10 secs at one
point, but by the end of the day, it was only 6.5 secs over
Jari-Matti Latvala. Latvala, sporting a prodigious amount of padding
under his HANS device thanks to his collarbone injury. The other
works Ford of Petter Solberg held third, 17.7 secs behind after
set-up issues cost him time. But, when the mud came, Solberg was in a
class of his own.
Loeb still lead after Day 2, by just
over 10 secs ahead of Petter Solberg's Ford. Jari-Matti Latvala's
rally went horribly awry when a slow puncture lead to a broken wheel
and no brakes on one wheel. This left him nearly 5 mins off the lead
but still in a good points-scoring position. Mikko Hirvonen held
third, but was still slightly off the pace throughout the two days,
nearly 2 mins off the lad.
Rain is an unusual occurrence on the
Acropolis Rally, but it came in force this year. It turned stages to
mud baths, which Petter Solberg revelled in. He chopped Loeb's lead
in half throughout the treacherous stages. It set up a possible
thriller of a day for Sunday, with Solberg having to take 2 secs per
stage out of Loeb over the 5 stages of the day. A pair of 19 km and
11 km tests would help this no end.
However, the very first stage turned
the fight for the rally lead on it's head. Solberg went wide on a
long, fast left-hander, clouting a bank very hard on the right-hand
stage of the road. The Fiesta RS WRC bounced across the road and
collected a tree, tearing a rear wheel off. Rally over for the
Norwegian.
Nevertheless, Solberg didn't regret the
decision to push, saying: "I don't regret the way I drove; I had
to take the chance. We have to push to try and beat Loeb, we're here
to win and not to come second. It would have been much easier to sit
back and settle for second, but we're not going to get anything if we
do that."
In a cruel twist of fate, Loeb suffered
a puncture 3 km into the second Aghii Theodori stage. In typical
Sebastian Loeb style, cool, calm and collected, he and co-driver
Daniel Elena elected to stop and change the tyre. They did so in 90
secs, getting under way with a 40 sec gap still over team-mate Mikko
Hirvonen.
Completing the (nearly) perfect rally
for Loeb, he won the Power Stage. Hirvonen claimed second, with
Latvala in third.
Amazingly, Latvala doubted his own
speed going into the rally. Those fears were put to bed when he went
fastest on 10 of the rallies 22 stages. Third is an amazing comeback,
and could have even won should his puncture not scuppered those
hopes.
He said: “It was really great to be
back on speed – of course I had some doubts,” said the factory
Ford driver. “The boys were doing 500 kilometres in Argentina and I
missed those. I did some [pacenote] practice with Miikka [Anttila] in
Finland, and luckily we had the test, but of course we had doubts. It
was great to see the speed was there.”
Suspension failure couldn't even stop
Valeriy Gorban from winning the P-WRC class in his Mentos-sponsored
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo. Subhan Aska took second, 3 mins 17 secs off
the lead, having a couple of overshoots and spins throughout the
rally. Third went to Ricardo Trivino, suffering from multiple
mechanical failures.
“This was our first win in PWRC and
it is a great result which I didn’t expect after the problems on
Friday. It was a really interesting rally and a difficult rally for
the car but we are really sad for Nicolas when he retired because we
had really close stage times.” an elated Gorban said.
Elfyn Evans took his first WRC Academy
win in Greece, powering to a dominating 2 mins 15 secs win over the
identical Ford Fiesta R2 Alastair Fisher. Fisher rolled his car on
SS11, losing time with the initial roll and the subsequent damage to
his windscreen. Nevertheless, he still finished ahead of Brendan
Reeves took a fine third, his first podium in the class.
“This is the roughest rally I’ve
ever done and it’s great to be here at the finish. After the
problems I had in Portugal it was important to get as many points as
possible for stage wins but at the same time you have to look at the
overall picture of the rally as well, which is why we didn’t push
in the last two.” said Evans.
The Acropolis Rally claimed many
victims in the Academy class. Pontus Tidemand went out with
driveshaft failure, as did Ashley-Haigh Smith. Joao Silva's fuel tank
sustained damage and put him out on SS12, and Fredrick Ahlin rolled
out SS11. Timo van de Marel was forced to SupeRally after going out
on SS4.
No comments:
Post a Comment