Day report: Bouffier heads ERC Rally Rzeszow victory battle

Frenchman Bouffier heads ERC Junior Under 28 pacesetter Nikolay Gryazin by 15.7s with home hero and reigning European champion Kajetan Kajetanowicz a mere 5.8s further back followed closely by ERC Junior U28 contenders Marijan Griebel and Sylvain Michel. And in a day of high drama, Alexey Lukyanuk, who is continuing his comeback from serious injury, crashed out of the lead on stage two, while a powersteering failure hit world championship star Mads Østberg’s hopes of success on his return to ERC action and promoted Bouffier into the lead after four stages. The Norwegian is sixth overnight, 2.0s behind French Tarmac champion Michel and 32.4s down on Bouffier.

ERC Junior Under 27 leader Chris Ingram was also in trouble when his Opel ADAM R2 developed a mechanical fault on stage four, handing team-mate Jari Huttunen a comfortable margin less than a week after he won the WRC2 category on Rally Finland. They had earlier set identical times on stage one.

Tibor Érdi Jr is locked in a close battle with Subaru Poland Rally Team’s Marcin Słobodzian for ERC2 honours. But Luca Rossetti’s ERC3 challenge came unstuck when he crashed his factory Toyota GT86 CS-R3 on stage three.

Running P16 on the road following a pop-off valve fault during Thursday’s Qualifying Stage, Bouffier, who reported a water pressure issue on his Gemini Clinic Rally Team Ford Fiesta R5 during the afternoon, said: “I’m quite confident and happy with my times. It’s not good Mads had a problem because I would prefer to take the lead in a different way. But it’s like this and we cannot complain. For sure tomorrow will be tricky but it will be a nice evening.”

Lukyanuk, who was seriously injured in a testing crash in Russia in early May, wasn’t due to return to ERC action until Barum Czech Rally Zlín at the end of August. But an arduous period of rehabilitation enabled him to come back ahead of schedule, despite the Russian Performance Motorsport driver revealing he was suffering from pain in his legs, hips and left ankle following his Qualifying Stage win on Thursday. He blamed his rally-ending crash on a pacenote error four kilometres from the finish of SS2.

“One of the corners was too optimistic,” he said. “I started to enter the right corner too early, supposing it was a fast corner that corresponded to my notes, but it appeared to be harder and we touched the ditch on the exit. There was a bank in the ditch and it launched us in the air, we rolled several times on the road. We are both okay apart from a couple of bruises. The previous corner was over the crest and I concentrated on it and paid less attention to the next one in the recce. The lesson is expensive but the confidence is still there. And if there was an option to restart with Rally2, I will do it immediately, but the car is damaged badly and we will have the next chance on Barum. I am sorry for our fans but I believe it is better to win a couple of special stages and retire than to drag behind in fifth or 10thpositon.”

And Lukyanuk wasn’t the only one of the 23 drivers in R5 cars to hit trouble: Polish brothers Jarek and Marcin Szeja lost four minutes changing a damaged left-rear wheel following an off on the opening stage where László Német rolled out on his second start in R5 machinery. ERC Junior Under 28 title contender Pepe López crashed approximately 15 kilometres from the start of the SS1, hitting a culvert in a ditch and rolling. Josh Moffett and Murat Bostanci suffered off-road moments, while Filip Nivette took to a field when a front-left puncture struck at 170kph. Max Rendina and Albert von Thurn und Taxis both suffered spins.

Elsewhere, set-up and confidence issues hampered European championship leader Bruno Magalhães and leave him languishing in P12 overnight. Polish champions past and present, Łukasz Habaj and Grzegorz Grzyb, are ninth and seventh respectively. Dávid Botka is P14 after five stages in his newly-acquired ŠKODA Fabia R5.