The forthcoming Rally d’Italia Sardegna – round six of the FIA World Rally Championship – is the second event in the schedule for the 2009 Pirelli Star Drivers. None of the five drivers in the FIA’s Pirelli-backed global young driver scheme has competed on the event previously and all will be keen to impress on what is the home round of the Championship for Pirelli – and for the Ralliart Italia team responsible for preparing and maintaining the five Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Xs which they will drive throughout the year.
As they did on their first rally this season (Vodafone Rally de Portugal) the Pirelli Star Drivers will have the opportunity to measure themselves against the fastest Group N drivers in the world, as they go head-to-head with the FIA Production Car World Rally Championship regulars on the Italian island event. The rally ahead - Rally d’Italia Sardegna Italy has a long history in the World Rally Championship, but Sardinia has only been a regular feature of the calendar since 2004, prior to that, the Italian round of the series – the Sanremo Rally – was based on the mainland. Since the shift to the beautiful island of Sardinia, the route has evolved to the compact test it is today, taking crews through some of the most dramatic landscapes Europe has to offer. One change for this season is the start venue, with this year’s Rally d’Italia Sardegna getting under way from the bustling port town of Olbia instead of the popular holiday venue of Porto Cervo. Those drivers who make the finish will get their chance to rub shoulders with the rich and famous, as the champagne celebrations remain in Porto Cervo on Sunday afternoon. Last time out - Vodafone Rally de Portugal (April 2-5) The drivers Car 61: Nicos Thomas/Stéphane Prévot “Since getting back to Cyprus from Portugal, I have done three days of testing in my own rally car. Certainly, this is not enough and I know I need to be doing more rallies than the ones I do with Pirelli Star Driver scheme. I am working to find some extra sponsorship which will help with this. So, when I wasn’t driving, I was doing some intensive training, working on my nutrition and spending some time on a local television sports channel as a guest.” Car 62: Jon Williams/George Gwynn Car 63: Jarkko Nikara/Jarkko Kalliolepo “I don’t know too much about Rally d’Italia, I have never been to this event or to Sardinia before. Between the rally in Portugal and Sardinia I have been working on my fitness and learning more English – these are both really important to me for this year and for my career. I haven’t really been able to do any driving in Finland. I am hoping to do some just before I leave for Italy, when the weather has improved a little bit. But at the moment the roads are not in such a nice condition. The snow has just gone and the roads are still quite wet and not so good to drive on. And, of course, I have been driving my forest machine for work as usual. I have also had some time to relax with my girlfriend which is good. For now, though, I can’t wait to get to Sardinia to get into the next race.” Car 64: Martin Semerád/Bohuslav Ceplecha “I am going to Sardinia with the wish to make it through the event without SupeRally. I am thinking of taking off some of the speed to make sure we are safe. Once I have an idea of the roads – and only if it’s safe – then we might push harder. For me, the target is proper PWRC points and having a clean rally without any problems. I don’t know too much about the event, but I have spoken with a very close friend and World Rally Championship co-driver Filip Schovánek who has helped me out by telling me some things about the event. It was also useful to talk to world renowned co-driver Robert Reid, who also helped me when we were training in Edinburgh. I guess we’re going to find out most when we are on the recce for the rally itself. Just before I get to Sardinia, I will have competed on the Rally Lužické Hory – it’s the first round of the Czech Sprint Rally Championship. It’s also the first rally I ever competed on – so it will bring back some happy memories for me.” Car 65: Mark Tapper/Jeff Judd “I’m scheduled to do some driving training days for some of the younger rally drivers in New Zealand just before I hop back onto the plane for Italy, which will be good to get me back into a rally environment. But there’s nothing like the competition to get you focused again. I’m really looking forward to the Rally d’Italia Sardegna. Sardinia looks like a beautiful place to go rallying and, from what I’ve seen, it looks like it could be rougher and more challenging than our first time out with the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X in Portugal. Talking about Portugal, all in all, I was pleased with my pace and strategy on that event. Obviously, the end result wasn’t quite what we’d hoped for, but we did pick up some PWRC points. The big thing for me in Portugal was the way Jeff [Judd, co-driver] got on with the pace notes. This worked really well. We don’t have a two-pass recce system at home, so I was a bit worried it might take time to get up to speed with this. It didn’t and I can take a lot of confidence and move forward to add more detail to my notes on the next event. The plan for Sardinia is to finish without SupeRally – that’s our number one goal. Otherwise, it’s the same game plan as for Portugal, to add more points to our PWRC total.” Q&A with Phil Short, Pirelli Star Driver Supervisor Q: What will be the toughest challenge on Rally d’Italia Sardegna for the Pirelli Star Drivers? Q: How would you sum up the new Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X’s performance in Portugal? There seemed to be a few problems. Q: Given that there will be no test for the drivers before Rally d’Italia Sardegna, how important will shakedown for the event be? Q: What’s the goal for this second event in the Pirelli Star Driver programme? Media links :
Rally d’Italia Sardegna is one of the World Rally Championship’s toughest events. The route comprises a fascinating mixture of fast and flowing roads with some testing technical sections. One of the features of this rally is how the soft, sandy surface of the Italian island gravel roads can change from the first to the second pass. As the drivers cut their way through the corners, rocks and boulders regularly become uncovered, ready to rob the unwary of a wheel or wreck the suspension in a potentially rally-ending incident. With no experience of these roads, Rally d’Italia Sardegna will be a major challenge of the driver’s ability to deal with these changing road conditions.
Following a slick and well-supported presentation to the world’s media on the Algarve, the five drivers got their season as Pirelli Star Drivers underway on Europe’s western-most round of the FIA World Rally Championship. Jon Williams was the only driver to manage the complete distance. The South African used the event as an opportunity to level his steep learning curve this year; prior to the pre-Portugal test, he’d never driven a Group N rally car or a left-hand-drive car. While Williams went the distance, Finn Jarkko Nikara set the pace on an impressive debut for the Scandinavian. Nikara showed well against vastly more experienced Production Car World Rally Championship competitors, posting fastest times in the PWRC. He retired twice after suffering damaged suspension and steering on his Lancer Evolution X. Mark Tapper also showed well on the Faro-based event, despite suffering from a recurring back injury. Tapper retired with damaged steering. Martin Semerád and Nicos Thomas both went off the road on the event. Semerád returned under SupeRally, but the damage to the left-rear of Thomas’s Mitsubishi was sufficient to rule him out of the final day.
Nicos Thomas said: “I’m looking forward to Sardinia. I haven’t done this rally before, but I have watched it on television – so I know it’s quite specific. I have also talked to Stéphane [Prévot, co-driver] a lot about this; he has been to this rally before. He tells me the stages are a bit rough and quite twisty and narrow in some sections. I think this will suit my driving style as it sounds like the roads are similar to the ones I’m used to. My aim is to finish the event. The first rally as a Pirelli Star Driver didn’t really go the way we wanted it to, but we were consistent until we retired. It’s still new for me with my new co-driver and listening to English pace notes. I’m sure we will be faster next time; in Portugal we were getting quicker with every stage. That’s something I want to make sure I carry on into Rally d’Italia Sardegna – I want to keep that improvement coming – and, yes, I do want to be faster than my rivals, including the Pirelli Star Drivers. One of the things I will always remember from the Rally of Portugal, however, is the fans – I have never seen so many of them. I felt overwhelmed; it will never leave my memory!
Jon Williams said: “I don’t really know much about Sardinia at all, I’m hoping to be able to get some in-car television footage to watch, this would really help. I need to work on my notes; this is the thing which became pretty clear from Portugal. I want to get over to Europe a little bit early before Italy so that I can do some work on the notes with my co-driver, that would help me for the next rally. The big thing for me is the cost, it’s fantastic that Pirelli is paying for everything, but I really need time in the car between events and to spend time with my co-driver and to do that, I need a sponsor. Since Portugal, I went back to Cape Town with lots of footage of what I’d been doing and started talking to more people – we’re the first South Africans ever to be in this kind of position. I want people from back home to get behind what we’re doing in this programme. The one thing I can do for free is keep working on my fitness – and that’s what I have been really doing a lot of. The next event in Italy is probably going to be a little bit warmer than it was in Portugal and, coming from Africa, I’m going to be used to that – hopefully that might give me an advantage over the other guys.”
Jarkko Nikara said: “I want to get to the finish of this event, that’s definitely the aim for me in Italy. I showed my speed on the last rally in Portugal, but now I need to get more experience of the car, so I need to get through all three days without any retirements. It would be nice if I could drive a little slower and still be fastest of the Pirelli Star Drivers. Retiring two times in Portugal was disappointing, but the team did a very good job and I’m happy for that.
Martin Semerád said: “I will celebrate my 19th birthday in the middle of the Rally d’Italia Sardegna, so I’m hoping I can make it a memorable celebration! I wasn’t satisfied with the result of the last event, definitely not. I made a mistake near the start of the event and that was very bad. Okay, I managed to get a little bit more experience from coming back to the event with SupeRally and managed to get one point in the Production Car World Rally Championship. While I wasn’t happy with the way I did it, I was happy for the team and my supporters that I did this.
Mark Tapper said: “I’ve been pretty busy between the Rally of Portugal and the next Pirelli Star Driver event in Sardinia. The good thing is that I’ve been doing a lot of driving; the not so good thing is that I’ve been driving big semi-trailer trucks for my father’s freight company and not rally cars!
Q: How will the challenge of Rally d’Italia Sardegna differ from that of the first Pirelli Star Driver event in Portugal?
A: The challenge of Rally d’Italia Sardegna compared with Portugal will be the road surface. If the weather stays dry, not just during the event, but before it as well then it will be very abrasive, making it tough on the tyres and the cars. If there is rain about, as there was just before last year’s rally, this will soften the surface more – reducing the abrasion but increasing the number of rocks pulled out of the surface. Either way, this will be one difficult event for a Group N car.
A: I think it will be the second pass over the stages. There is a lot of bedrock out there in Sardinia, and the passage of rally cars over the top of the bedrock exposes large boulders embedded in the surface, which are not necessarily apparent during the recce. The risk of damage is therefore greater on the second run.
A: The Evolution X is still a very new car to rallying, so I guess it's no surprise that we encountered a few problems in Portugal. But, let’s not forget, some of the problems were self-inflicted, as you might expect with drivers relatively inexperienced at this level. So the Ralliart Italy team running the cars is working hard on improvements to the Lancers, and I am working on the minds of the drivers to get the correct approach to this tough event coming up.
A: Shakedown will be quite important, to give them a feel for the conditions. However, we have arranged for them to watch the Production Car World Rally Championship test session on the Monday ahead of the event and to talk with the regular drivers at the test, so I'm sure they will be able to learn something from that opportunity.
A: The goal for this event is the result. On the Vodafone Rally de Portugal we showed we have the speed: we had three drivers well under one second per kilometre off the leaders. But, for these guys to impress, they also need to show they can finish well, as well as drive quickly. I don't mind trading half a second or more per kilometre of that speed, if that means the cars come through without problems or having to use SupeRally to get to the end of the event.
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