Rally d`Italia Sardegna

Wow. I can’t find any other words to sum up that round of the IRC. Just wow!

It didn’t seem to get much of a build up on the Internet considering it is the first rally since the Monte to have live stages broadcast on Eurosport, however if you missed it you missed an incredibly action-packed rally.

Rally d`Italia Sardegna took its first prisoners on the opening stage of Saturday. Ogier, coming off the back of that incredible first WRC win, ran wide while sweeping the road which resulted in a puncture. After a quick change and restart, mechanical problems hit him next. Pulled up on the side of the road the rally was over for him.

He wasn’t the only one to suffer though, everybody was complaining about how slippery the stage was. P G Andersson had a puncture and Magalhaes had brake problems. Although, they made it through relatively unscathed in comparison to Guy Wilks who, after a steady season so far, crashed mid stage resulting in a hospital visit for the Brit. He had mentioned immediately after the crash he had a pain in his lower back and x-rays showed two fractured vertebrae.

My Nan at the moment is suffering with the exact same back break however she didn’t get checked out straight away so she’s having a tough time healing. So knowing how bad this injury can get if it’s not sorted straight away, Guy was lucky in that sense that he went straight to hospital. Wishing him a speedy recovery – it’s never nice to see sporting stars injured.

Guy wasn’t the only to crash in the opening stage, Mikkelsen also rolled his Fiesta and apparently the M-Sport crew were looking for a chain saw to retrieve the car! Luckily for them them it didn’t seem too damaged as it was back out again today under SupeRally regs.

Many a car continued to cross the first stages’ finish line with punctures and/or damage to the car.

The rest of the day continued in a similar fashion – lots of broken cars! Cetinkaya stopped on stage (only to return today like Mikkelsen) and Wittmann rolled his car. Just on a personal note here, I love Franz Wittmann. How nice is it to have someone that happy in a car? All he says in interviews is how much fun he’s having and it kind of reminds me of Ken Block in the WRC. Shame that Wittmann can’t seem to keep his car on the road! Gutted for him.

Moving onto day two and with a relatively sedated ss8/9 it was ss10, which took its toll on Kris Meeke. Caught live on the Eurosport coverage Meeke ran wide and fell down a small embankment landing on the Peugeots right side. Both driver and co-driver were thankfully OK (we wouldn’t want another Brit to go down!) the car however wasn’t. Meeke’s rotten luck this year continues.

All the while Hänninen had been making great progress and was keeping Italian driver Andreucci behind him, the local driver having a brilliant rally in his own right.
The other Skoda of Kopecký was also having a steady rally and was closing in fast on Andreucci.

As the final stage got underway Hänninen had to make sure he kept the car on the road if he wanted the overall win, which was what he did brilliantly. Andreucci took the stage win meaning Kopecký had no chance of moving to the second step of the podium although he gave it his best shot and finished only 2.6 seconds behind the Italian.

However the deserving winner was Hänninen who kept his cool all weekend and kept the car on stage when others couldn’t. He finished 35.6 seconds in front.

One thing about this weekend struck me though, the live coverage was brilliant – OK Charlton Kirby says ‘yes’ too often, but it was amazing to watch some stages live all the same. And from the amount of people on twitter who also commented that they enjoyed watching it live makes you wonder… how long until the WRC follows suit?