The new Fiat Grande Punto Rally S2000 will be bidding for its first win on a gravel surface on the 34th Rally San Marino which gets underway in earnest this morning. Although the exciting new rally car has won three out of its first four Italian Championship events, the one it missed victory on was the Rally dell'Adriatico, the only round thus far held on gravel, although an excellent second place was claimed by Andrea Navarra despite his inexperience with the new car. The N.technology team also gained more time on gravel last weekend when they travelled to South Africa to contest the African Rally Championship counting Zulu Rally, although the car retired with engine difficulties early on. It is also 26 years since Fiat last won the San Marino Rally, a record that is really overdue to be swept away.

There is huge expectation that both N.technology factory drivers' - Paolo Andreucci and Andrea Navarra - will be chasing for the overall victory while at the same time the leading GpN Mitsubishi and Subaru crews will be looking to wrest glory away from the exciting Italian car. Andreucci, the overall leader of the Italian Rally Championship so far, will be ably backed up by Navarra in his quest for more points, the latter ably suited to the task in hand as he is the acknowledged king of national gravel ralling. The driver from Cesena will be busy trying to improve the feeling for the Grande Punto, and will surely attempt to claim overall victory. The other top drivers, Piero Longhi (Subaru Impreza), Renato Travaglia (Mitsubishi Evo IX), Andrea Dallavilla (Evo IX), Franco Cunico (Evo IX) and Andrea Aghini (Impreza) will all be bidding to win the rally outright and wrest their way back into the title fight. Amongst the two-wheel drive brigade there will be a three-way fight with the driver from Valle d’Aosta, Chentre (Citroen C2) and the Friuli driver, Rossetti (Peugeot 206) ready to try to put put the leader of the category Stefano Bizzarri (Renault Clio) in the shade.
 
The rally is the fifth round of the 2006 Italian Rally Championship (CIR) and the third of the South-West European FIA Cup. It runs over a course beset with major technical challenges that will put to test the best of protagonists in the event. The rally organisers - the SMRO (San Marino Racing Organization) - has tweaked the schedule for this year in order to make the event even more thrilling.
 

The starting ceremony of the 34th San Marino Rally took place at the San Francesco Gate in walls of San Marino - the tiny Italian republic - yesterday evening after a 'shakedown' was held earlier in the day. Today and tomorrow (2nd-3rd June) will see the rallycars undertake 15 timed special stages (6 today, 9 tomorrow,) five of which will be repeated three times, making up a timed total of 223,740 km, out of 680,890 km of the whole course, with the second leg expected to be much harder on the crews than the opening day.

This is because a brand new special stage has been added to the second day's schedule of the well-known course. It incorporated a rally road which has never been run over before by the competitive cars, a special stage which had not been used for 10 years but which has now been reinserted. The course highlights the difficult parts of the rally which is very technical demanding, with two long stages, one almost 23 km long and the other 28, one in each leg.