ERC: Rallye du Valais / Rally review
61/64
More bad luck
This really wasn’t Craig Breen’s nor Jeremy
Ancian’s rally. Both put up some solid driving but both were also constantly chased by
bad luck. After the time penalties, now it was
time for the cars to break down. Breen was
hampered by a broken power steering (imagine that in the Swiss mountains…) while
Ancian was slowed down by a puncture
which required changing in the stage. All
their best efforts aside, Breen got no higher
than third with Ancian taking fourth. Ancian
was also rewarded with the Colin McRae
Flat Out Trophy though for his inspired driving and hard work during the weekend.
More drama
Up front Lappi was enjoying himself and
edging further and further away. Behind him,
more drama was about to unfold. Andreas
Aigner had been very impressive in second
place until he pushed his Impreza just a bit
too hard. He went off the road totaling his
Impreza, thankfully both he and co-driver
Barbara Watzl were unhurt. This crash promoted Russian youngster Vasily Gryazin up
to third, a good result for the teenager. He
too though, would not finish the rally. Just after the start of stage 15 he crashed his Ford
Fiesta S2000 suffering mayor rear end damage, ending his rally. There was still one last
bit of excitement in the rally when Burri, who
was in a solid second place, started hearing
strange noises from the engine of his Fiesta. With two stages to go and a one minute
lead over Craig Breen in hand, his car started misfiring. He managed to get through the
last two stages, but was quite lucky to do
so “It was getting worse and worse, I don’t
know if we would have finished if we had
another stage.” But finish they did, with just
8 seconds in hand over Breen.
Despite strong resistence from local hero Burri (below left) Lappi
managed to hod on for his first ERC win (not to mention his first
proper win on tarmac).
18 Year old Vasily Gryazin also had a very promising run untill he
crashed on stage 15.