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Renato Travaglia (above) claimed his first
win at the wheel of the Grande Punto Abarth
S2000 this afternoon on the 42nd Rally
d'Antibes, but for Volkan
Işık (top) a fighting third place wasn't enough to
win the FIA European Rally Championship
title. |
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Renato
Travaglia claimed his first win at the wheel of the
Grande Punto Abarth S2000 this afternoon on the 42nd
Rally d'Antibes, but for Volkan
Işık,
a fighting third place wasn't enough for the Turk to
claim the 2007 FIA European Rally Championship title.
Işık came into this 10th and final round of the
FIA European Rally Championship with 48 points, just one
short of Simon Jean-Joseph, after the Turk had turned in
a storming drive to victory on the last round of the
series, the ELPA Rally in Greece, which he dominated,
and during which he showed impressive speed on his less
favoured surface, asphalt.
However coming to France for the series' conclusion the
odds were really stacked against Isik. His French rival,
a former national rally champion who knows these roads
so well, was at the wheel of the nimble Class A6 Citroën
C2, and with dry conditions prevailing on the stages,
many of which are used by the Monte Carlo Rally, he
would be an almost impossible task for Isik to wrest the
advantage.
After 18
stages, split into three legs comprising of six stages
each, Jean-Joseph and Jack Boyere finished in second
place 1 minute and 41.3 seconds ahead of
Işık,
who was third, to wrap up the title for the second time
(he first won it in 2004 in a Renault Clio S1600).
Jean-Joseph takes over the title from Giandomenico Basso
who won it last year in a Grande Punto Abarth, during
the car's debut season.
However
Işık,
a former multiple Turkish Rally Champion, who has Kaan
Ozsenler alongside in the co-driver's seat, can take
much credit away from his ERC performances this year,
and in truth,
his result on this rally was much better than onlookers
had predicted. In his first full season in the Europe
series with the
Super2000 category Grande Punto Abarth, run by Fiat Motorsports Turkey, he has simply got faster and faster
all year long, maturing rapidly as a driver and becoming
highly proficient on his less favoured surfaces. If
Işık
returns to tackle the ERC next year, having now got his
'learning' year successfully under his belt, he will
certainly start as one of the title favourites.
At the front of the rally the highly experienced former
double ERC champion (2002 and 2005) Renato Travaglia
didn't put a foot wrong, leading from SS1 to the
chequered flag, to take his first rally win at the wheel
of the Grande
Punto Abarth. The Italian built up a lead of 29.7
seconds by the end of leg one, at the conclusion of the
second leg it was 1:49.4, and at the finish line it has
grown to a massive 2:13.0. A difficult season blighted
by retirements and exclusions served to end the experienced
Italian's bid for a third European title.
Behind the top trio of Travaglia, Jean-Joseph and
Işık,
came Polish crew Michal Solowow and Maciek Baran in the
Cersanit Rally Team's Grande Punto Abarth. He was 5:12.6
adrift of the rally winner at the chequered flag. And
making it four Abarth finishers in the first five was
the French crew of Philippe Mermet and
Gerard Clerton (+6:28.5). ERC regulars, Corrado
Fontana and Renzo Casazza, had a very difficult rally,
receiving a 2 minute penalty for being late to the start
of SS1 which left them at the back of the field. By the end of leg 1
they had battled back up to 7th place, but their fine
recovery ended with mechanical problems during the
middle leg. |