Kopecky charges back to the front
On the face of it, there’s no story here. Jan Kopecky wins an asphalt rally in a Skoda Fabia R5. It’s what he does. It’s what he’s done for years. But this is a special one, arguably one of his best yet.
Changing a puncture in Panzerplatte on Saturday morning, the six-time Czech champion knew his chance had gone. Going into the longer of the two Baumholder stages, he’d built a solid and strong 23-second lead over Eric Camilli’s M-sport Ford Fiesta R5. When he came out he was nine places lower on the leaderboard and staring down the barrel of a 70-second deficit.
“Let’s see what we can do now,” said the brave-faced Kopecky. “It was the front-right. We stopped immediately and got it changed really quickly, we were only stopped for a minute and 40 seconds.”
From then on the factory Fabia was on a mission and began a remarkable climb back up the leaderboard underpinned by a succession of fastest times.
But the win looked a big ask with Camilli and Citroen’s Stephane Lefebvre at the top of the table and looking strong. Kopecky began to ponder the podium’s bottom step as a best-case scenario, but when misfortune – in the shape of an alternator problem hit for Camilli and suspension damage and a puncture for Lefebvre – ruled them out, the door was open for an exceptional comeback drive.
“We never stopped pushing,” said Kopecky. “We took some risks and it paid off. I’m very happy with this result for the championship. We have started four WRC2 rounds and won them all.”
Kopecky’s team-mate Kalle Rovanpera was just as happy with second place. “This was my first time driving an asphalt round of the world championship,” said the Finn. “I knew this would be such a tough rally, so I am really pleased with what I have done here. I don’t normally say such things, but I think we have made quite a good job on this event.”
Fabio Andolfi’s third place and first private Skoda was also a great result for the Italian. He led briefly, but knew it was always going to be tough to trouble the factory cars. This week the bottom step of the podium would suffice. As an Italian, he had other things on his mind.
“I am thinking of the people of Genoa right now,” he said. “This result is for them.”
Top Brit Gus Greensmith endured a tough event. A testing crash forced a change of co-driver, with Stuart Loudon stepping in for the hospitalised Craig Parry, but the first morning showed great promise – not least with a quite astonishing time in the rain-lashed third stage. Greensmith matched Kopecky’s time to the tenth, despite completing the last mile with only three wheels on his Ford Fiesta R5 following an aquaplaning moment and a kerb.
A broken driveshaft put paid to any designs on a podium and a broken thumb while working on the transmission didn’t help matters much either.
Finland’s Taisko Lario took his maiden WRC3 win with a start-tofinish class success in his Peugeot 208. “I’m a Finn,” he said, “so to take my first win in WRC3 on Tarmac is something I am proud of. It shows how far I have come as a driver. This was a nice result for me – I pushed very hard to start to open the big gap and then I managed it.”
Enrico Brazzoli was a distant second, 11 minutes back with Britain’s Louise Cook third in her Ford Fiesta.