BRITON INGRAM TURNS HEADS ON WRC2 RETURN
Chris Ingram made a big impact on his return to WRC2 duty, leading outright after winning the opening stage before he settled for top spot in the final Junior category ranking.
The 28-year-old Brit hadn’t rallied at World level since his run to 11th overall in Sardinia at the start of June, but he was quickly into his stride with the fastest time of all the Rally2 runners on the new Vleteren stage.
Sadly his choice of hard compound covers would prove his undoing when it rained as the rally route took crews across the border into a France for a few kilometres with a timeconsuming spin into a field not helping Ingram’s prospects.
Although the moment – and tyre choice – meant he lost touch with the leading trio, he held off Jari Huttunen for fifth for a time, regained the spot when Huttunen was forced out with an engine glitch on his Fiesta, before he set about catching and passing Gregoire Munster for fourth, a place he would keep to the finish.
“I was a bit unlucky, but we’ve set some great pace and to get the Junior win is mega,” said Ingram, who was making his fifth start alongside co-driver Craig Drew. “The last time I did this rally was the last crash I ever had six years ago. That scared me and I have not crashed a car since on a rally, but it was very tough getting through on the final day.”
Stephane Lefebvre took the overall WRC2 win, despite picking up 15 seconds of penalties for shortcuts. Andreas Mikkelsen’s Toksport team had hoped protests lodged would lead to harsher sanction, but victory went to the Frenchman by 3.1s, as Yohan Rossel completed the podium.
Josh McErlean went off on SS6 from ninth, Neil Simpson was 14th.