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Friday, 03 May 2019 16:35

Lukyanuk takes the leadership at the end of the first section Featured

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The current European rally champion and winner of the last three editions of the Rally Islas Canarias has held a really tight competition with Pepe López in the first three stages, namely, ’Valsequillo-Festina’, ‘San Mateo-DISA’ and ‘Tejeda’. López is leading the national overall and Cruz the regional one.

Rally Islas Canarias in its 43rd edition has started on Friday morning, 3rd May, with the first section made up of the stages ‘Valsequillo-Festina’ (10.96 km), ‘San Mateo-DISA’ (12.01 km) and ‘Tejeda’ (24.1 km). From the very beginning, the C3 R5 of Pepe López-Borja Rozada and Alexey Lukuanuk-Alexey Arnautov have stood out in the classification, as they shared the best times in this loop.

López and Rozada were first in Valsequillo, but the FIA ERC champions responded in the next stages turning the classification and managing to complete the section as leaders with a 3.7 seconds advantage. As expected, it has been Tejeda, with the longest special stage, where the largest time gaps were reached and, therefore, the one to foster the most important changes in the classification. This way, the leading pair is now 23 seconds ahead of the third classified. 

Great excitement in the following positions of the ERC overall, since, even though Iván Ares-David Vázquez (Hyundai i20 R5) took advantage of the transmission problems of Pierre-Louis Loubet-Vincent Landais (Skoda Fabia R5) in order to reach the third position, their advantage is still quite small. As the Galicians are part of a group of five teams settled in a timeframe of less than five seconds with Marijan Griebel-Stefan Kopczyk (Skoda Fabia R5), Chris Ingram-Ross Whittock (Skoda Fabia R5), Norbert Herczig-Ramón Ferencz (Volkswagen Polo GTI R5) and Lukasz Habaj-Daniel Dymurski (Skoda Fabia R5), who are still the ERC leaders.

Leading the ERC1 Junior are Pepe López-Borja Rozada, whereas in the ERC3 Junior, the Frenchmen Jean-Baptiste Franceschi-Antoine Gorguilo settled first with the Ford Fiesta R2T as a novelty in this edition, and the Spaniards Efrén Llarena-Sara Fernández (Peugeot 208 R2) reaching a third place,18.8 seconds behind. ERC2 is Abarth’s territory, since the Canarians David García-Jordi Díaz are leading the provisional overall after three stages, with three seconds ahead of Alberto Monarri-Alberto Chamorro.

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