This morning will see the Super2000 category Fiat Grande Punto Rally making its full FIA World Rally Championship debut as a two-car entry sets out on the opening stage of the fourth Rally of Turkey, with newly-crowned FIA European Rally Champion Giandomenico Basso spearheading the attack.  One of the toughest events on the World Rally Championship calendar, the event will provide Fiat’s new rally machine – which has already established its credentials on tarmac – with a stern test on loose, treacherous surfaces, as well allowing it to set a benchmark against the turbocharged Group N machines (which also run in the Class N4) and the massed ranks of Junior World Rally Championship entrants. 

Basso, who competes for the official Fiat factory team under the “New Business 16 Spa” banner, and who will as usual have regular co-driver Mitia Dotta alongside, will also be heralding the arrival of this new breed of Super2000 rallycars on the WRC scene.  The Italian, who won the Turkish round of the European Rally Championship with this car back in May, will be backed up at the start in Antalya this morning by a second Super2000 Grande Punto Rally, driven by regular Turkish Fiat rally crews Volkan Işık and Güray Karacar, who finished second in the ERC encounter at the wheel of a Super1600 Punto.  The two Grande Puntos will run at the head of the N4 contenders, after the FIA priority-seeded runners. 

A total of 80 entrants, drawn from 21 different countries, have arrived in Antalya this week for the 13th round of the World Rally Championship.  With eighty starters, Turkey is now in the top four WRC rounds in terms of participation.  Besides this, it is also noteworthy that most of the FIA Junior World Rally Championship (JWRC) teams have chosen to race in Turkey, counting the event as one of the six they must choose out of a total of nine.
 

There are six manufacturer teams, seven FIA Second Priority crews, nineteen JWRC crews, and forty-two non-priority crews set to participate in this rally when it gets underway today. On the FIA Second Priority Drivers’ list, there are two Turkish crews: Ercan Kazaz/Serdar Kurbanzade from the Subaru Turkey Rally Team, and Mehmet Besler/Özden Yılmaz from Ford Rallye Sport Turkey, will represent the host nation in this category’s battle. 

Located on the Turkish coastline, Antalya and its surrounding areas are world-famous, with glamorous beaches dotted along its 640km-long coastline, and a landscape made up of pine forests, olive and citrus groves, and palm, avacado and banana plantations, making it an ideal location in which to base the rally.  The Turkish Riviera is the tourism capital of Turkey, and has a very important role to play for the Turkish economy as a whole. As in the previous three years, the ceremonial start of the Rally of Turkey took place in Cumhuriyet Square yesterday evening, between 18:30 and 20:30.  After three days of intense and tough rally action, starting this morning, the surviving crews will reach the event’s finish in the Kemer Service Park area on Sunday October 12th, having completed the full rally distance of 1201.85km, including 19 timed special stages making up 351.01km.