|
A stunning win
for Giandomenico Basso on the 43rd Rally del Friuli e delle Alpi Orientali
yesterday sees the factory Abarth & Co. driver rapidly
closing in on the Italian Rally Championship (CIR) title.
With the Italian's nearest rival, Paolo Andreucci, finishing
down in fifth place, Basso now has a useful 9 point
advantage over Luca Rossetti who has moved up to second in
the points race.
It was Rossetti
though, driving the Super2000 Peugeot 207, who provided
Basso with his biggest challenge on the rally, the pair very
evenly matched until problems slowed Rossetti early on day
two. Basso set his marker down early on, winning SS1 and SS2
to go into the rally lead, an advantage he was able to
maintain throughout the opening day. Rossetti swiftly fought
back to beat the Abarth driver to fastest time on the next
two stages, before Basso wrapped up the day's final two
stages with two more quickest times to go into overnight
parc ferme with a slender 6.4 second advantage. As the
Super2000 machines slugged it out for supremacy, overnight
third place was held by Piero Longhi (Subaru Impreza) who
was a massive 1 minute and 23.2 seconds adrift off the rally
leader.
With six stages
contested on leg 1, the second day would see the surviving
crews contesting a further six stages. Rossetti went for
'maximum attack' on the first stage of day two of the day
and wrested the rally lead away from Basso for the first
time, but by just 0.3 seconds. However the Peugeot driver
had problems on the next stage and the gap blew out to 10.1
seconds in Basso's favour, and then to 26.9 on SS9, and from
then on it was just a case of Basso keeping the gap steady
to the finish.
Apart from the battle at the front, the main point of note
was the enormous gap between Basso and Rossetti and 'the
rest' - Andrea Aghini (Subaru Impreza) grabbed the final
podium slot at the finish, but he was nearly three minutes
off the pace. The gap between the new breed of Super2000
machines and the Group N cars seems to be growing by the
event. Basso and Rossetti set all the fastest stage times of
the rally between them, 7 in favour the Abarth driver and
five for the Peugeot pilot. In fact Basso never posted a
time outside the top-two, setting second quickest time on
each of the stages that Rossetti won.
Luca Cantamessa
was the first Mitsubishi driver home in fourth place, while
in fifth the reigning CIR champion, Paolo Andreucci, saw his
chances of retaining the title taking a nose-dive. He is now
10 points off Basso. Elsewhere, Abarth's young protιgιe
Umberto Scandola had a very short lived rally. He started
out impressively enough, posting the third best time on SS1
and going second on the next test; however he went off on
SS3 because the intercom failed in the car and stand-in
co-driver D'Amore had to use hand signals to convey the pace
notes by hand, hence the ensuing accident. |
