Tempestini eases clear in Junior WRC fight
Simone Tempestini topped the Junior WRC standings at PZM 73rd Rally Poland on Friday night after early leader and fellow Italian Andrea Crugnola was sidelined with a damaged radiator.
Crugnola won Thursday night’s opening speed test in the rally base of Mikolajki and retained the lead on Friday morning’s early tests until a heavy landing brought an early end to his day in SS4.
His demise left Ole Christian Veiby in front of Tempestini by just a tenth of a second, but Tempestini relegated the young Norwegian and eased away to end the first full day of competition with a 12.8sec advantage in Citroën’s DS 3 R3.
“We took no risks and it was a perfect day. The only thing I wasn’t happy about was my tyre choice for the 17km stage in the first loop. I chose the hard tyre thinking that the surface would be hard, but there was a lot of loose gravel,” said Tempestini.
Terry Folb was more than two minutes further back in third after losing a minute with a puncture. Vincent Dubert lost time with pace note problems but recovered to hold fourth ahead of Romain Martel.
Lukasz Pieniazek dropped 90sec after going off before later retiring with transmission problems while Mohamed Al Mutawaa went out with a broken clutch.
Martin Koci, second in the standings after the opening round in Portugal, failed to start after a monster crash in shakedown on Thursday morning wrecked his car.
