IRC - 2012 : Round 8 - Sibiu Rally [ Romania ]

Day 2 [update]:

'Andreas Mikkelsen' wins 'Sibiu Rally Romania'!

The result and winner was obvious with the overall results on the board with just the Super Special remaining.

It was a fantastic result for the young Norwegian who won the rally with a comfortable margin of more than 5 minutes ahead of the chasing pack, says "It's been long weekend. With so big gap it's just about getting the car to the finish. We had lot of second places, it's nice to be again on the top spot. It's important result for the whole team.". Although the luck and conditions were in his favour as the down-order had issues with visibility due to hanging dust over the stages, he was not a easy one to catch either!

With all the drama with the second placed Patrik Flodin, this is what he said "We are very very happy, we are very proud of the second place. All the guys in the team did great job. Thanks to them and to Petter! Now we showed what we can do. We had bad luck on the beginning, but we are looking forward to next rallies."

Here is what the final podium winner, Francois Delecour said, "It was nice to be in the battle. We would like to do more IRC rally."

The overall top 5 final results are as below..

Pos.	No.		Driver / Co-driver Vehicle	Pos.	SS time Penalty	Total time	Diff.Leader Diff.Prev.
1	1	1	Mikkelsen A. / Floene Ola  Škoda Fabia S2000	2 1	02:15:28.0	02:15:28.0	00:00:00.0 00:00:00.0
2	4	2	Flodin Patrik / Bergsten Göran  Ford Fiesta S2000	2 2	02:21:01.8	02:21:01.8	00:05:33.8 00:05:33.8
3	5	3	Delecour F. / Savignoni D.  Peugeot 207 S2000	2 3	02:27:24.9	02:27:24.9	00:11:56.9 00:06:23.1
4	17	5	Keleti Edwin / Csomortani B.  Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X	3 1	02:30:13.6	02:30:13.6	00:14:45.6 00:02:48.7
5	10	7	Porcisteanu V. / Dobre Daniel  Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X R4	2 4	02:33:32.6	02:33:32.6	00:18:04.6 00:03:19.0

[courtesy irc-results.com]

Final day videos, finally!

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Day 1 [update]:

Andreas Mikkelsen leads the rally by a comfortable 2 minutes & 44+ seconds, ahead of S.Wieggand & F.Delecour who are separated by 24.7 seconds Despite running first and holding a road cleaning position to the chasing pack, the Norwegian kept a healthy distance and with a cool head like his, helped making no mistakes and distancing himself away from the lot. Almost all other competitors were complaining & reported hanging dust issues in most of the day's stages, despite 3minutes starting difference.

This is how the top 5 leaderboard looked after SS1.

Pos.	No.	Driver / Co-driver Vehicle	Group	SS time	Aver. speed sec/km	Diff.Leader Diff.Prev.
1	1	Mikkelsen A. / Floene Ola  Škoda Fabia S2000	2	00:04:14.1	103.42 0.00	00:00:00.0 00:00:00.0
2	4	Flodin Patrik / Bergsten Göran  Ford Fiesta S2000	2	00:04:17.9	101.90 0.52	00:00:03.8 00:00:03.8
3	2	Wiegand Sepp / Gottschalk Timo  Škoda Fabia S2000	2	00:04:18.7	101.58 0.63	00:00:04.6 00:00:00.8
4	9	Szabó Gergély / Borbely Karoly  Škoda Fabia S2000	2	00:04:21.8	100.38 1.05	00:00:07.7 00:00:03.1
5	5	Delecour F. / Savignoni D.  Peugeot 207 S2000	2	00:04:22.4	100.15 1.14	00:00:08.3 00:00:00.6

[courtesy irc-results.com]

In SS2, F.Delecour had to trail the slowly moving Flodin's car for the most of the stage as, Flodin had an issue with his car was moving slowly and was not aware of Delecour behind him as he said that he couldn't see him in the rear-view mirror as there was too much dust to make out. Also in this stage Dan Girdofan had and accident and the stage was cancelled later on as this car was blocking the stage & the later cars were given an notional time.

The SS7 was a night stage and almost all cars running behind the stage opener had to slow down and really struggle with the vision hampered with hanging dust, which really played worse with the headlights reflecting light back and hampering the vision drastically. It was the rally leader who had a clean run and away from such issues as he was first into the stages and no dust issues for him.

Overall top 5 positions at the end of Day 1:

Pos.	No.		Driver / Co-driver Vehicle	Pos.	SS time Penalty	Total time	Diff.Leader Diff.Prev.
1	1	1	Mikkelsen A. / Floene Ola  Škoda Fabia S2000	2 1	01:40:01.2	01:40:01.2	00:00:00.0 00:00:00.0
2	2	2	Wiegand Sepp / Gottschalk Timo  Škoda Fabia S2000	2 2	01:42:49.7	01:42:49.7	00:02:48.5 00:02:48.5
3	4	4	Flodin Patrik / Bergsten Göran  Ford Fiesta S2000	2 3	01:45:27.9	01:45:27.9	00:05:26.7 00:02:38.2
4	5	3	Delecour F. / Savignoni D.  Peugeot 207 S2000	2 4	01:46:48.6	01:46:48.6	00:06:47.4 00:01:20.7
5	15	9	Pushkar Vitaliy / Mishyn Ivan  Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X	3 1	01:50:10.5	01:50:10.5	00:10:09.3 00:03:21.9

[courtesy irc-results.com]

Stay tuned for more updates on Day 2!

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Day 0:

Start for SS1:

Ceremonial Start:

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Round 8 of the IRC Series is headed straight for the Romania's gravel (part tarmac) stages this week. The entry list looks pretty strong at the top order, however G.Basso (Ita) has taken vacation from this rally. It is also the 5th round of the Romania's National Rally Championship series and hence the entry is 60+.