In Ponta Delgada, 16 July, 2011 – ŠKODA's spectacular performance at Sata Rally Acores has been crowned by a fantastic result – for the fifth time in the history of IRC, ŠKODA vehicles won the first three places. The winners, Hänninen & Markkula of ŠKODA Motorsport, are celebrating their third victory in this year's IRC championship. After a breathtaking battle, Mikkelsen & Floene of ŠKODA UK Motorsport finished second (+ 42 seconds), Kopecký & Starý, also of ŠKODA Motorsport, came third. While ŠKODA has further reinforced its lead in the Manufacturers competition, Hänninen has regained the championship lead, although he has only appeared in four IRC events this season.
Taking place in Sao Miguel, the biggest of altogether nine Azores Islands, the sixth IRC event of this season started on Thursday with three stages. Reigning champion Juho Hänninen had the best start of all, followed by Magalhaes in a Peugeot (- 4 seconds), Mikkelsen (only 1 second behind Magalhaes) and Kopecký (- 11 seconds).
After a rainfall at night that had soaked the route, the island woke up to a cloudy morning on Friday, and the clouds above the exotic landscape became even darker to produce some more rain and a heavy fog. Commenting on the extreme weather conditions during the morning transfer, Petr Starý said: “I kept looking at the pace notes, as there was nothing to be seen ahead of us, anyway.” Two of the nine stages planned for Friday were cancelled in the end – Stage 5 due to a herd of cows on the track and Stage 9 for too many broken vehicles on the track after the previous passage. Andreas Mikkelsen got pretty fast in the second half of the day to get just one second behind leader Hänninen. Kopecký finished Day 2 in fourth place, two seconds behind last year's winner Magalhaes.
The final five stages on Saturday saw fierce battles for victory and third place and also a temporary change in the lead – Mikkelsen caught up with Hänninen in Stage 1 to get to the lead, while Kopecký fought his way to third place (to defend it until the end). The merciless battle between Mikkelsen and Hänninen continued, and Hänninen regained the lead in the following stage. At the end of the day, Mikkelsen tactically slowed down to play it cool in the last two stages and make sure he didn't lose his runner-up position, because, as he said later, the 10-second gap behind a driver of Hänninen's calibre was simply too big. In the end, Hänninen beat Mikkelsen by 42 seconds, Kopecký came third, another minute later.
Head of the ŠKODA Motorsport team Michal Hrabánek was thrilled to bits about the result: “I wish to thank all the ŠKODA crews for their performance. They avoided mistakes on this challenging track that posed a high risk of defects and contributed to ŠKODA's best result in this year's IRC. We are going to have a fairly long break now which we will use to recover strength and prepare for the Zlín Rally (Czech Republic) in August, one of the major events of the championship where we expect to see a highly competitive field of drivers and crowds of fantastic fans as usual”.
Juho Hänninen sees his this year's triumph in the Azores as a satisfaction for last year when a defect stopped him on his way to victory in the last-but-one stage: “We desperately wanted to win this year, because we had so much bad luck here last year. The battle with Andreas seasoned the whole rally - we had to fight till the end. Now we are looking forward to our “home” rally in Finland.”
Commenting on his third place, Jan Kopecký said: “We had to find the optimum rhythm, because we hadn't driven on gravel for quite some time before this event and we knew about it in its early stages. The third place is a great wrap-up for ŠKODA's podium triumph. We are going to have a break now, but we already can't wait to appear in the Barum Rally”.
As part of the IRC series, ŠKODA Motorsport will appear at the Barum Rally in Zlín over the last weekend of August, with both Kopecký & Starý and Hännien & Markkula on the start line. Juho Hänninen will join the Red Bull ŠKODA team to appear in two SWRC events, first in his home Finland in late July and then in Germany one week before the Zlín Rally.
IRC current rankings:
1. Hänninen 83 points
2. Bouffier 79 points
3. Loix 70 points
4. Kopecký 70 points
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