By Anand Philar
Longyou (China)(IANS) : Team MRF from India enjoyed a profitable outing with a 1-2-3 finish Friday on day one of the China Rally, the seventh concluding round of the Asia Pacific Rally Championship (APRC), when the Super Special Stage was run.
MRF’s Katsu Taguchi (co-driver Mark Stacey) topped the time sheets among APRC contenders, clocking one minute, 48.3 seconds, followed by teammates, Jussi Valimakki (Jarkko Kalliolepo) at 1:49.8 and Gaurav Gill (Glen MacNeall) at 1:50.4.
The trio finished ahead of Cody Crocker (Ben Atkinson) of Australia, who only needed to cross the start-line to win the driver’s championship for the second year running.
The event gets into a more serious mode over the weekend when the cars head out of the city for the 15 special stages to complete the 736 km-long rally.
Crocker, who had taken an unassailable lead going into the China Rally, said his main focus in this event was to help garner points for Subaru in the manufacturers’ championship stakes.
“It’s great to win the APRC title for the second year, and now we will be going flat out to ensure Subaru claims the manufacturers’ title,” said Crocker who, after skipping the first round in New Caledonia, had won the next four in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Malaysia followed by a fifth place in Indonesia.
Thus, Crocker has 70 points leaving the two former APRC champions Valimaki (49) and Taghuchi (47) to fight it out for second and third positions in the championship.
The 1.8 km-long Super Special Stage this afternoon was run on the Super Cross format with two cars competing simultaneously on parallel tracks with a crossover.
Taguchi, using soft compound, dirt tyres, had obviously made the correct choice as he comfortably won the stage displaying his usual car control and aggression that had marked his APRC crown in 1999.
The 2005 champion Valimaki, opting for medium compound “cut” tyres, was very much on pace, but a couple of errors cost him previous fractions of seconds. Likewise, Gill, in his debut season, paid dearly for mistakes and admitted that he had a “bad drive”.
“I made too many mistakes the first time around and only in the second lap did I find my touch,” said Gill who signed up with MRF at the start of the year.
The event has attracted over 50 entries, a majority of them competing in the Chinese Championship that is being run concurrently.