After the first four special stages of the Rally de Curitiba, the second round of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge, the official Abarth Grande Punto S2000 assigned to Giandomenico Basso and Mitia Dotta lies in third overall. Although he didn't have any previous knowledge of the Brazilian event's extremely fast gravel roads, Basso has taken on a swift pace during the first part of a competition which promises to be quite tough. He managed to maintain a tiny time difference towards Britt Meeke and Frenchman Vouilloz.
When the crews returned to the service park, Basso was happy with the performance of the Abarth Grande Punto and with what he had achieved in the first four special stages. The Abarth works driver said: “After the recce, I thought that there would be a slight difference between the times of the first pass and those of the second one but I realized that it was not the case. This is a good point: it means that we can yet improve during the rest of the leg”. Mitia Dotta, his co-driver, confirms: “However, it seems to me that we were already going fast enough”.
Young Finn Anton Alén, co-driven by Timo Alanne, adopted a less cautious strategy. After having posted the second fastest time in the first special stage, he went off the road in the third and damaged the rear suspension. He was able to carry on and to tackle the next stage but lost substantial time (more than seven minutes).
The first leg of the Rally de Curitiba finishes in the evening (at 21:40 CET) after three more special stages. Tomorrow, the crews restart at 7:20am (11:20am CET), while the finish at the Autódromo de Curitiba is scheduled at 14:05 (18:05 CET). The day features six special stages totalling 120 km against the stopwatch.
Overall classification after the first four special stages: 1. Meeke-Nagle (Peugeot 207 S2000), 30min47.1s; 2. Vouilloz-Klinger (Peugeot 207 S2000) + 27.8s; 3. Basso-Dotta (Abarth Grande Punto S2000) + 33.4s; 4. Cancio-Garcia (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 44.2s; 5. Loix-Smeets (Peugeot 207 S2000) + 1min04.0s; 6. Tomboly-Fabiani (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 1min35.1s; 7. Ligato-Garcia (Mitsubishi Lancer) + 2min13.5s; 8. Rauly-Montero (Subaru Impreza) + 2min36.1s.
Turin, 6 March 2009.
International
