Bastia, 12 May 2012 – ŠKODA UK Motorsport’s Andreas Mikkelsen has maintained his lead in the Intercontinental Rally Challenge after finishing in a points-scoring 5th position in his factory-prepared Fabia S2000 on the 55th Tour of Corsica.
Co-driven by Ola Fløene, the IRC champion led the event at the end of Leg 1, but a collision with a telegraph pole and subsequent puncture on SS5 cost him almost three minutes and denied him any chance of victory. Having dropped from 1st to 8th, Andreas fought back to 5th on Leg 2 before driving conservatively on Leg 3 to maintain position.
ŠKODA has extended its lead in the IRC Manufacturers’ table, thanks to a superb drive from Jan Kopecký (ŠKODA Motorsport), who secured an excellent 2nd place finish after outpacing Pierre Campana on the final day of competition.
Andreas: “We came to Corsica to try and score a really good result and we didn’t quite achieve that after our incident on the second day of the rally. Up until then we’d been fighting with Dani [Sordo], and seeing his previous results on Tarmac you can see he is really fast, so it was good for me to match myself against Dani and see that I can perform on Tarmac as well as he can. After we’d lost so much time it was all about scoring the maximum amount of points that we could, and fifth place certainly is valuable points on the table. The points we scored here in Corsica could be important come the end of the year – they certainly were last year.”
The next round of the IRC is the Targa Florio-Rally Internazionale Di Sicilia (14-16 June).
Final positions (provisional top 10 after SS14)
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Dani Sordo/Carlos Del Barrio (Mini)….3hrs 22mins 01.6secs
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Jan Kopecký/Pavel Dresler (ŠKODA Fabia S2000)….+17.9secs
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Pierre Campana/Sabrina de Castelli (Peugeot 207 S2000)….+32.4secs
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Bryan Bouffier/Xavier Panseri (Peugeot 207 S2000)….+53.5secs
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Andreas Mikkelsen/Ola Fløene (ŠKODA Fabia S2000)….+4mins 19.0secs
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Craig Breen/Gareth Roberts (Peugeot 207 S2000)….+5mins 28.7secs
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Jean Marc Manzagol/Etienne Patrone (Peugeot 207 S2000)….+6mins 22.1secs
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Sepp Wiegand/Timo Gottschalk (ŠKODA Fabia S2000)….+6mins 54.8secs
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Hermann Gassner Jnr/Klaus Wicha (ŠKODA Fabia S2000)….+7mins 10.2secs
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Jean-Mathieu Leandri/Pierre Marien Leonardi (Peugeot 207 S2000)….+7mins 39.9secs
IRC points (provisional after Round 4)
Drivers’
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Andreas Mikkelsen….71pts
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JanKopecký…58pts
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Juho Hänninen….43pts
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Sepp Wiegand….34pts
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Bryan Bouffier….27pts
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Dani Sordo….25pts
Manufacturers’
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ŠKODA….166pts
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Peugeot….102pts
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Renault….37pts
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Subaru….28pts
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M-Sport….24pts
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Honda….18pts
