Victory finally celebrated the 21-year-old debutant Ralf Sirmatsis.
Acropolis Rally was part of the program of the World Championship until 2014 and was known as one of the toughest in the calendar series. The list of winners of the Greek stage — the real stars of the world rally: Sebastien Loeb, Sebastien Ogier, Juha Kankkunen, Miki Biasion, Petter Solberg, Marcus Gronholm. Victory in Greece is a very prestigious, but at the same time is incredibly difficult. This year it is particularly felt the drivers, from which the very awaited victory in the Acropolis Rally.
Cajetan Kaetanovich came to Greece with the rank of leader of the individual competition at the European Rally Championship. Aleksey Lukyanuk, who was forced to withdraw from the start in the previous stage in Ireland due to a heavy crash in testing, took the second place and was determined to give battle to his Polish opponent. However, he and the other finished the rally at the end of the top ten, and the reason for it... their own mistakes!
Polak has lost all chances to win on the first special stage — a revolution and the loss of more than 14 minutes, they threw it on the last, 34th place in the peloton. Later in the course of the race Kaetanovich won eight special stages and at three was the second, which allowed him to play a lot of positions and finish eighth.
Accident Kaetanovicha:
The Russian finished the first day of the leader in the two seconds ahead of Ralf Sirmatsisa. But on the second special stage of the final day of the race Alex had not noticed bumps on the road, the front wheel buried in it, leading to damage to the steering rod and the suspension arm. Operative repair in field conditions allowed Lukyanyuk and his navigator Roman Kapustin continue driving, but the loss of time was a whopping 18 and a half minutes.
Accident Lukyanyuk:
On the penultimate Su — a new problem: a turbine nozzle fell off, resulting in the loss of three more minutes. As a result, on the basis of a two-day rally crew Lukyanyuk / Kapustin finished in tenth position in twenty minutes behind the winner.
The victory in his first start at the wheel of a car won R5 category Latvian Sirmatsis Ralph — he played on the same car Skoda Fabia R5, driven by Nicholas Gryazin won not so long ago the Moscow Rally Masters Show.
Second place in the Acropolis Rally took a local driver Lambros Afanassulas, and closed the top three winners Czech Jaromir Tarabus.
The next stage of the European Rally Championship — Azores Rally — will be held in the first weekend of June.
Photo: L.Arnautova, www.fiaerc.com
