The Croatia Rally started saw European Champions Luca Rossetti and Matteo Chiarcossi, who with their Abarth Grande Punto S2000 and Michelin tyres, dominated the first leg of this weekend’s event by winning all four special stages run today.
Renato Travaglia was unfortunately forced to retire due to an engine problem with his Skoda Fabia S2000. The fight for second place was waged between Piero Longhi (Skoda Fabia S2000) and Luca Betti (Peugeot 207 S2000) who took turns behind the Abarth driver and ended the first leg separated by just 0,2sec: this gap, no mater how small, is important as it has given Longhi an extra points over Betti in the leg results for the European Rally Championship.
In the wake of the three Italians are Polish Oleksowicz (Ford Fiesta S2000) and Bulgarian Iliev (Skoda Fabia S2000), while the first local driver, Croatian Niko Pulic is sixth. Andrea Dallavilla (ninth overall) leads in Gr N and is very close to Maciej Rzeznik (Subaru Impreza R4), while Slovenian Rok Turk with the Peugeot 207 R3T leads the two-wheel-drive cars.
It is worth mentioning the great start made by Juraj Sebalj (Mitsubishi): the three-time winner of this rally was fifth overall after the first two special stages, but lost 12′ on the third test. Also noteworthy is the fact that Mauro Patrucco (Mitsubishi) lost a lot of time on the last special stage last night due to a malfunctioning lamp pod.
Luca Rossetti said: “Everything is going very well. I also took this opportunity to try out some alternative solutions in view of my next event in the Italian championship, the Targa Florio, which has an itinerary and a surface similar to today’s stages.”