The battles for the two ERC Junior titles are taking centre stage on Barum Czech Rally Zlín tonight with both wide open starting the final day of the sealed-surface FIA European Rally Championship counter, which Jan Kopecký is leading outright following a dramatic opening leg.
Chris Ingram heads Czech federation-backed Filip Mareš in ERC1 Junior with Efrén Llarena leading ERC3 Junior for Rallye Team Spain ahead of title rivals Sindre Furuseth and Ken Torn.
Behind 2013 ERC champion Kopecký (ŠKODA Motorsport), Toksport WRT’s Chris Ingram and Mareš (ACCR Czech Rally Team) are battling over a 100,000 euros prize from promoter Eurosport Events to compete on the deciding two rounds of the ERC season for being the top young star in an R5 car.
With thousands of fans lining the route, reigning ERC1 Junior champion Nikolay Gryazin (Sports Racing Technologies) had initially been ahead of both his fellow young rivals and fighting for the overall lead until a puncture cost him two minutes, turning the lead battle into a Kopecký versus Alexey Lukyanuk (Saintéloc Junior Team) affair.
But when Lukyanuk was forced to retire after a front-left puncture on the latter pass of Halenkovice damaged his front-left suspension – a near identical incident to the one which sidelined him from first place on Rally Islas Canarias in May – Mareš and Ingram came to the fore.
The championship-battling pair traded places several times during the day, and Ingram had begun to edge ahead in the middle of the first leg.
Semetín, a stage which drivers had pinpointed as the hardest of the day, turned the battle on its head, with Ingram dropping 9.2s and conceding he had been “driving all over the shop for about a kilometre”. He’d crashed heavily on the stage in the past and admitted he’s never got to grips with it since.
That promoted Mareš to first place in ERC1 Junior, but there was one final twist before the day was out. Ingram produced a blinding run on the final night stage to beat Kopecký to the fastest outright time, gaining five seconds on Mareš and pipping the home favourite to a maximum seven leg points and the overnight lead in ERC1 Junior by 3.8s.
“It’s been a fantastic day,” said Ingram. “I always go well in the dark and road rally boy Ross [Whittock, co-driver] always does as well. Though I didn’t think we’d be that quick; it felt ragged. We were just carrying as much speed as we could through the dodgy sections but it was comfortable, so bring on tomorrow.”
Mareš was determined to regroup and restore his class lead, remaining optimistic despite the late setback. “It was a good day for us and we can be satisfied with our performance generally, but there are a lot of things we can improve for tomorrow. I hope the new day will suit us better than today.”
Václav Pech (EuroOil – Invelt Team) briefly passed the quarrelling pair of ERC Juniors but was bumped back down to fourth place overall as Ingram and Mareš upped the ante in the final stages of leg one.
Tomáš Kostka (Kresta Racing) had struggled with tyre wear late on the first loop after taking soft-compound rubber but felt more comfortable on the second set of stages and cemented his fifth place, 12.5s behind Pech.
Double ERC Junior champion Marijan Griebel was able to pick up his pace as the day wore on, making his way up from P10 to sixth by the end of the day aboard his ŠKODA Fabia R5.
Despite losing two minutes with his earlier puncture Gryazin was able to climb all the way to seventh place, retaking third place in ERC1 Junior on the final stage of the loop.
That improvement came at the expense of ERC3 Junior graduate Simon Wagner, who is making his ERC1 Junior debut this weekend in a ŠKODA Fabia R5 Evo but has been battling a stomach bug. The Austrian, a fine fourth on Friday night, dropped behind Gryazin and Jaromír Tarabus to end the day in ninth place.
Łukasz Habaj admitted he hadn’t made the most of the “gift” given to him by Lukyanuk’s retirement, ending leg one in P10. He had struggled to make an impression on the front-running positions and lost time when he hit a tree on Semetín, his car very badly dented but otherwise undamaged.
Tomáš Pospíšilík, who participated in the first ever ERC Junior event in 2014, made a good impression on his step up to ERC1 Junior, rounding out the top five in class, despite a problem with the positioning of his auxiliary light pod on the day-closing Kostelany night stage.
Mattias Adielsson (Sweden National Team) battled back from a puncture and power steering failure to hold sixth in ERC1 Junior overnight but Miko Marczyk (ŠKODA Polska Motorsport) crashed out on the first pass of Kostelany. Hiroki Arai went off the road on Saturday’s opening test.
Andrea Nucita (Loran SRL) leads both the ERC2 production category and Abarth Rally Cup after leg one, while Efrén Llarena (Rallye Team Spain) is keeping his ERC3 Junior title hopes alive by leading the ERC3 category outright, 7.8s ahead of Jean-Baptiste Franceschi. MOL Racing Team’s Norbert Herczig retired from the top 10 with an electrical issue.
Nucita puts his Abarth on top in Zlin ERC2
Andrea Nucita’s title campaign is back on track in the FIA European Rally Championship’s ERC2 category, the Sicilian eading both the production class outright and also the Abarth Rally Cup order.
Loran SRL driver Nucita has led from the start after topping Zlín’s late night superspecial on Friday, putting himself on course for a vital maximum points score in both championships.“This [last] stage was really tricky but at the end of the day I am very happy, especially for the championship. The race is not finished, again one [more] day,” he said.
One of Nucita’s main rivals, Rallytechnology’s Dariusz Poloński, had held firm in second place, less than a minute off the pace, but was halted by a transmission problem and retired.
Juan Carlos Alonso moved into second place in ERC2 as a consequence, but had to cruise through the last three stages with a broken limited-slip differential. Nucita’s team-mate and ERC2 championship leader Zelindo Melegari crashed at high speed on stage four. Both Melegari and co-driver Corrado Bonato were hospitalised with rib injuries and remain in intensive care to undergo continued medical treatment and assessment, though both are fully conscious and in good spirits.
Chris Ingram heads Czech federation-backed Filip Mareš in ERC1 Junior with Efrén Llarena leading ERC3 Junior for Rallye Team Spain ahead of title rivals Sindre Furuseth and Ken Torn.
Behind 2013 ERC champion Kopecký (ŠKODA Motorsport), Toksport WRT’s Chris Ingram and Mareš (ACCR Czech Rally Team) are battling over a 100,000 euros prize from promoter Eurosport Events to compete on the deciding two rounds of the ERC season for being the top young star in an R5 car.
With thousands of fans lining the route, reigning ERC1 Junior champion Nikolay Gryazin (Sports Racing Technologies) had initially been ahead of both his fellow young rivals and fighting for the overall lead until a puncture cost him two minutes, turning the lead battle into a Kopecký versus Alexey Lukyanuk (Saintéloc Junior Team) affair.
But when Lukyanuk was forced to retire after a front-left puncture on the latter pass of Halenkovice damaged his front-left suspension – a near identical incident to the one which sidelined him from first place on Rally Islas Canarias in May – Mareš and Ingram came to the fore.
The championship-battling pair traded places several times during the day, and Ingram had begun to edge ahead in the middle of the first leg.
Semetín, a stage which drivers had pinpointed as the hardest of the day, turned the battle on its head, with Ingram dropping 9.2s and conceding he had been “driving all over the shop for about a kilometre”. He’d crashed heavily on the stage in the past and admitted he’s never got to grips with it since.
That promoted Mareš to first place in ERC1 Junior, but there was one final twist before the day was out. Ingram produced a blinding run on the final night stage to beat Kopecký to the fastest outright time, gaining five seconds on Mareš and pipping the home favourite to a maximum seven leg points and the overnight lead in ERC1 Junior by 3.8s.
“It’s been a fantastic day,” said Ingram. “I always go well in the dark and road rally boy Ross [Whittock, co-driver] always does as well. Though I didn’t think we’d be that quick; it felt ragged. We were just carrying as much speed as we could through the dodgy sections but it was comfortable, so bring on tomorrow.”
Mareš was determined to regroup and restore his class lead, remaining optimistic despite the late setback. “It was a good day for us and we can be satisfied with our performance generally, but there are a lot of things we can improve for tomorrow. I hope the new day will suit us better than today.”
Václav Pech (EuroOil – Invelt Team) briefly passed the quarrelling pair of ERC Juniors but was bumped back down to fourth place overall as Ingram and Mareš upped the ante in the final stages of leg one.
Tomáš Kostka (Kresta Racing) had struggled with tyre wear late on the first loop after taking soft-compound rubber but felt more comfortable on the second set of stages and cemented his fifth place, 12.5s behind Pech.
Double ERC Junior champion Marijan Griebel was able to pick up his pace as the day wore on, making his way up from P10 to sixth by the end of the day aboard his ŠKODA Fabia R5.
Despite losing two minutes with his earlier puncture Gryazin was able to climb all the way to seventh place, retaking third place in ERC1 Junior on the final stage of the loop.
That improvement came at the expense of ERC3 Junior graduate Simon Wagner, who is making his ERC1 Junior debut this weekend in a ŠKODA Fabia R5 Evo but has been battling a stomach bug. The Austrian, a fine fourth on Friday night, dropped behind Gryazin and Jaromír Tarabus to end the day in ninth place.
Łukasz Habaj admitted he hadn’t made the most of the “gift” given to him by Lukyanuk’s retirement, ending leg one in P10. He had struggled to make an impression on the front-running positions and lost time when he hit a tree on Semetín, his car very badly dented but otherwise undamaged.
Tomáš Pospíšilík, who participated in the first ever ERC Junior event in 2014, made a good impression on his step up to ERC1 Junior, rounding out the top five in class, despite a problem with the positioning of his auxiliary light pod on the day-closing Kostelany night stage.
Mattias Adielsson (Sweden National Team) battled back from a puncture and power steering failure to hold sixth in ERC1 Junior overnight but Miko Marczyk (ŠKODA Polska Motorsport) crashed out on the first pass of Kostelany. Hiroki Arai went off the road on Saturday’s opening test.
Andrea Nucita (Loran SRL) leads both the ERC2 production category and Abarth Rally Cup after leg one, while Efrén Llarena (Rallye Team Spain) is keeping his ERC3 Junior title hopes alive by leading the ERC3 category outright, 7.8s ahead of Jean-Baptiste Franceschi. MOL Racing Team’s Norbert Herczig retired from the top 10 with an electrical issue.
PROVISIONAL TOP 10 POSITIONS (after nine stages, 116.29 kilometres)
1 Jan Kopecký (CZE)/Pavel Dresler (CZE) ŠKODA Fabia R5 Evo 1h07m06.5s
2 Chris Ingram (GBR)/Ross Whittock (GBR) ŠKODA Fabia R5 +57.4s
3 Filip Mareš (CZE)/Jan Hloušek (CZE) ŠKODA Fabia R5 +1m01.2s
4 Václav Pech (CZE)/Petr Uhel (CZE) Ford Fiesta R5 +1m03.7s
5 Tomáš Kostka (CZE)/Ladislav Kučera (CZE) ŠKODA Fabia R5 Evo +1m16.2s
6 Marijan Griebel (DEU)/Pirmin Winklhofer (DEU) ŠKODA Fabia R5 +1m33.1s
7 Nikolay Gryazin (RUS)/Yaroslav Fedorov (RUS) ŠKODA Fabia R5 +1m57.4s
8 Jaromír Tarabus (CZE)/Daniel Trunkát (CZE) ŠKODA Fabia R5 +2m05.8s
9 Simon Wagner (AUT)/Gerald Winter (AUT) ŠKODA Fabia R5 Evo +2m06.1s
10 Łukasz Habaj (PLN)/Daniel Dymurski (PLN) ŠKODA Fabia R5 +2m13.1s