Punto S2000 Leads Ciocco Rally!
Within 48 hours of receiving approval from the FIA that their four-wheel drive Super 2000 car was officially homologated and fully authorised to run in international rallies, Paolo Andreucci took his Fiat Punto Abarth S2000 car into the lead of the Italian Championship Ciocco Rally - and pulled away from the opposition. After a cautious start on the first two short special stages, Andreucci took the lead on the long stage 3, and proceeded to make five fastest times out of the nine which were run on the first leg. His team-mate Andrea Navarra is currently lying seventh place overall. Four stages remain to be run (Sunday).
The events leading up to Ciocco have been stressful for the Fiat team! Apart from the inevitable difficulties of negotiations to homologate a first car for a new set of rules, there have been various technical issues, culminating when Navarra had an engine failure at Shakedown the day before the start! So far, no serious technical difficulties have been experienced on the event by either Fiat driver. This is the first rally run to full FIA rules in which there has been a Super 2000 car able to take part.
Fiat successfully obtained homologation approval in the days before the event, but only after giving assurances to the FIA that their cars will be available for purchase at less than the mandatory upper Euro 150,000 price limit. For the FIA this new formula carries considerable importance, as it has two-fold significance beyond the obvious challenge of making a price cap formula work.
Firstly, regulations for these cars are being tuned so that their performance is to be comparable with existing cars in the Group N category, and this is the first time officials have had the chance to discover if their calculations are working out well. Secondly, the immediate intention of the formula is to entice more manufacturers into this category, to provide more opposition to the Mitsubishi and Subaru cars, which dominate this class. Super 2000 cars are eligible for use in world championship rallies in the Class N4, but this year their drivers cannot qualify for the FIA Production Car World Rally Championship.
This is the third year that FIA regional championship events (those below the world championship level) have been effectively limited to cars complying with Group N or the two-wheel drive Super 1600 category. As the results for the first leg of Ciocco were released, there came an unexpected surprise beyond the evident success of the new formula. The nearest challenger to Andreucci's four-wheel drive Super 2000 cars was not an orthodox Group N car - but a front-wheel drive Clio Super 1600 car driven by a local driver Bizzarri.
The top Group N car at the moment is the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo of Renato Travaglia, running 38.7 second behind Andreucci, in third place. Till now, the only chance where officials have been able to gauge the performance of Super 2000 cars against Group N cars has been in South Africa, where Toyota and VW cars built to these rules have been running for the past 12 months. Results of their equivalence investigations have not so far been conclusive.
Then again that would have been a Turbo S2000... nah that doesn't match imo....
