Season 2012 is coming to an end, and also the IRC series too. In the coming season onwards, the IRC will be merged into the European Rally Championship. The season finale was scheduled at the city of Limassol, Cyprus. The event is a mixed surface based rally with both gravel & asphalt sections in the special stages. The event is held since 1970 in various championships, including WRC, IRC & MERC. Since 2010, it has been in the IRC calendar & was last won by Andreas Mikkelsen in Skoda Fabia S2000 car. The event was eventually won by Nasser Al-Attiyah in his new Ford Fiesta RRC, which he will be fielding with two more in the coming WRC season in a WRC addon kit for the same car. Andreas Mikkelsen was pretty much there on his tail until he picked up a puncture in SS10 and dropping couple more minutes but still comfortably finishing in 2nd place. He also let his codriver Ola Floene to drive the last stage of the rally, to give him a feel of the heat of the event on his
The 12th round of IRC season 2012 is going live in exactly in a day's time. Top level competition may be missing, but the rally never lost its charm to entertain the fans & spectators in this beautiful asphalted roads that go around the hilly region of Italy. For most of us [especially myself], Italy means the homeland of the great machine that ruled the rally stages in the early formative years of WRC & rallying itself. Not just machines, even the footwear for the machines. Walter Rohrl in this epic picture gives the goosebumps! Coming to the competition there about 35cars, with just two S2000 Peugeot 207's, one from the homeland team & another from Swiss. The rest 2WD cars are from Italians itself, with an exception of another Swiss. The fantastic stages of the mountains will be the most exciting place to rally with the kind of roads it offers. More updates updated here itself asap. For more details of the rally competition, check the link her