Rossetti, driving a privately-entered local Abarth Grande Punto S2000 on this occasion, collected 25 points in Turkey for securing the overall win, plus 21 points for being fastest across each of the three legs (with seven points on offer for each day) – and his title bid was further bolstered as all his main title rivals hit major problems and dropped valuable points. The Italian, when he took the chequered flag at 4pm yesterday afternoon, also made it two wins in three years on the Bosphorus Rally (he won in 2008 at the wheel of a Peugeot 207 S2000).

The Bosphorus Rally, which, as well as being the fifth round of this year's ERC also counted towards the Turkish Rally Championship, started with a huge crowd in Bagdat Street on Friday evening. After the ceremonial start, the crews returned to the service park for refuelling before continuing on to the first stage of the event, Deniz 1. For this event Rossetti was at the wheel of a locally-entered private Abarth Grande Punto S2000 from Team Pegasus owned by Cem Acar which has also been running Yazici all year. The Super 2000 machine was run by Factory Speed Turcars, whose Team Principal is Aramaci Yusuf.

Rossetti started the opening stage in first position as the top-seeded driver, but as the ‘road sweeper’, he was faced with a difficult mission. Despite this, he was still very rapid, and his time was only 1.3 seconds slower than the fastest driver through the test, Maclej Oleksowicz (Ford Fiesta S2000). Turkish youngster Yagiz Avci (Ford Fiesta S2000) was the fastest local driver through the stage. On the second and final stage of the opening evening Rossetti, took his first fastest time of the rally in front of Avci, one of Turkey's rising rally stars, which carried him straight into the overall lead and handed him the maximum ERC points available for the opening day. It would be a lead that Rossetti would never relinquish over the remaining 14 stages spread over the next two days. Opening stage winner Oleksowicz was 14.3 seconds slower on SS2 meaning he slipped down to third position. Rossetti's closest ERC rival, Luca Betti (Peugeot 207 S2000) suffered a puncture on SS2 and had to stop and change the tyre. However that tyre then punctured too, and he ended up losing almost half an hour.

Rossetti continued his dominant form throughout Saturday's second day, winning four stages and extending his advantage over Avci, who won three of the leg's eight stages, to half a minute. Yazici, in the other Pegasus-entered Grande Punto Abarth, was third at the end of the day, Ukrainian Yurii Protasov held onto fourth place, while another Turkish driver, Ercan Kazaz, completed the top five. While the Scorpion pilot collected his second maximum day's ERC score, his key title rivals all suffered badly: Oleksowicz was hit by mechanical problems and was unable to finish the day while Betti and Italian Corrado Fontana (Mitsubishi Evo) also had similar difficulties.

Yesterday's third and final day saw Rossetti again increasing his advantage at the front over the leg's six timed stages that totalled 114 km and he ran out the clear winner as the cars rolled into the service park located in Pendik for the victory ceremony, a clear minute ahead of Avci's Fiesta, and with Yazici in third that made it two Abarths on the final podium. The experienced local driver finished 2 minutes and 30.8 seconds behind Rossetti but had just under three minutes in hand over Kazaz in fourth place as well as collecting important points towards the Turkish championship.