[wrcR]WRC 2015 – Rally Guanajuato México | n7thGear™ Motorsport News

[wrcR]WRC 2015 – Rally Guanajuato México Mar 11, 2015 3:32:57 GMT -6

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Post by n7thGear™ on Mar 11, 2015 3:32:57 GMT -6

Sébastien Ogier secured victories at Rally Guanajuato Mexico on Sunday when he eased through the final leg to win by 1min 18.8sec.

Sébastien Ogier admits he can’t believe he leads the WRC drivers’ championship by 34 points after having dropped just three points in the opening three rounds.

Ogier: “I think we can be proud, we did an amazing job this weekend. “I think it’s one of the best wins of my career. To open the road in Mexico and win is special. A lot of people made mistakes, but we put maximum pressure on them.”

Sébastien Ogier and Julien Ingrassia recorded their 3rd win of the season in Mexico, making it three out of three since the start of the 2015 season. And it's full marks: just like in the last two years, they combined overall victory with a win in the Power Stage.

“To have this gap after three rallies is something I could never dream of. I don’t know which words to use to describe the start of the season and to describe this weekend,” said the Volkswagen Polo R pilot.

“It looks really great in the championship but we’ve done only three out of 13 rallies so there is definitely no time to relax. There are five rallies in a row on gravel now and normally that can be an advantage for me. I don’t want to say what might happen on the next one, but what is done is done.”

Ogier feared opening the road on Friday and Saturday would handicap him as he swept the gravel to leave faster conditions for those behind. As a result he focused on perfecting his car’s set-up in pre-event testing.

“I worked even harder than usuaI in the test to try to find a set-up which would work a little bit better in the slippery conditions. I don’t say we discovered something, but we went further in setting up the car for these conditions and it worked pretty well.

“We pushed hard without doing mistakes, pushing the others to make mistakes, and we were very surprised to be where we were on Friday. From then on we realised that finally, with all that happened, we were in the fight for victory. A perfect weekend maybe,” he said.

BATTLE for SECOND

An early spin left Østberg languishing at the bottom of the leaderboard in Citroen’s DS 3. He recovered quickly and held off Mikkelsen, who insisted he was driving cautiously to gain experience of roads that were mainly new to him.

"It hasn’t been a good start to the season for the team and the pressure got even harder during the event when Kris went off,” Ostberg explained. “Obviously there was no chance for me other than to get to the end. But I wanted to push. I wanted to do a good rally.”

Robert Kubica kept up his record of winning at least one stage on every rally so far.

Milan – Robert Kubica, using Pirelli tyres on the World Rally Championship this year, kept up his record of winning at least one stage on every rally so far, going fastest on Saturday morning in the hot and rough gravel of Rally Mexico but Sébastien Ogier held a comfortable lead at the midpoint of the third day.

Kubica’s pace was underlined in the first two split times of SS4, El Chocolate, when he was 11.4 seconds faster through the first 12.6 kilometres than World Rally Champion and eventual His pace once again stunned the service park.

The Pole is Pirelli’s most high-profile driver, but many other Pirelli-equipped runners also starred in Mexico, proving that the Italian tyres can help privateer squads to challenge the factory teams.
Prokop finished sixth

Martin Prokop, for example, claimed another points finish in Mexico, to consolidate his position as the highest-placed private driver in the World Rally Championship, ahead of some factory team drivers. Prokop finished sixth in Mexico as the highest-placed Pirelli competitor, while Kubica was 18th after going off the road.

Lorenzo Bertelli also starred on Pirelli tyres in Mexico, overcoming his lack of World Rally Car experience to set a career-best second-fastest stage time on the opening test of the rally, in front of tens of thousands of fans at Guanajuato. And to underline the pace of Pirelli’s products, two out of the top three on SS6 were equipped with Pirelli tyres, despite only making up a small proportion of the entry.

In WRC2, Pirelli also put in a strong showing with Yuri Protasov leading the category in his M-Sport built Ford Fiesta RRC, holding off this year’s Dakar winner and reigning WRC2 champion Nasser Al Attiyah. Unfortunately, engine problems meant that Protasov lost the lead, but he still finished in the points, along with Pirelli’s reigning Production champion Max Rendina.

The Pirelli drivers used the latest evolution of Pirelli’s Reinforced K tires, in hard and soft compound. Despite the complexity of the stages, as well as the heat and altitude, the Italian tyres emerged strongly from the ordeal of round three of the World Rally Championship.

Pirelli senior tyre engineer Matteo Braga said: “It was a very difficult rally, as all the drivers agreed. There was very little grip, and the roads were often dirty and rough. One of the biggest challenges was the constantly changing grip, which contributed to the high number of incidents from start to finish. Robert Kubica once again exhibited truly amazing pace despite a road position that was not always to his advantage, while we also witnessed excellent performances from Martin Prokop and Yuri Protasov, who demonstrated an instant understanding of the car-tire package to ensure consistent speed that allowed them to be competitive from start to finish.”

The next round of the World Rally Championship is Rally Argentina, held in Villa Carlos Paz from 23-26 April. Pirelli’s latest Scorpion gravel tires will once more be back in action.

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[wrcR]WRC 2015 – Rally Guanajuato México

Post by n7thGear™ on Mar 11, 2015 3:32:57 GMT -6

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