The remaining C2 Junior experience competitors woke up for the second day of the Rally Portugal, round two of this year s Junior Rally Championship, to see heavy rain that made the complex stages even more slippery. After the longest day of the Rally Portugal, Irishman Shaun Gallagher is the surprise leader of the Citroen contingent. His C2-R2 outlasted the more powerful C2 Super 1600 of Conrad Rautenbach, who stopped with a broken driveshaft on the first stage of the morning. Also on the sidelines of this extremely tough rally are Citroen C2-R2 drivers Stefano Benoni and Gilles Schammel – who both went off the road this morning: Benoni on the first stage and Schammel on the second. The cars are currently awaiting recovery and a decision as to whether or not they can re-start tomorrow. The C2 Super 1600 of Martin Prokop did not re-start today after a highspeed roll on the opening leg yesterday that damaged the car considerably.
Raphael Auquier (B) – Cedric Pirotte (B) (Citroen C2-R2)
Born 03/10/82 – Single – Lives Braine l Alleud (Belgium)
« Luckily the rain was not too bad for me this morning, and when I came through the stages they were mostly dry and sunny. We had quite a good run: in fact we were catching up the car in front of us on nearly all the stages this morning. This afternoon was more tricky for us: we had a puncture 15 kilometres before the end of SS12 and decided to drive on to the finish. We thought about changing the tyre briefly, but it was the right decision to continue. If we had changed the tyre we would have lost about three minutes; as it was we lost less than two minutes. I m not happy with the handling of the car though: I think we must have touched something earlier that affected the suspension geometry. »
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