After the debut of the Junior Championship on the Rally Norway, the overwhelming majority of the C2 Junior Experience competitors will meet in Portugal. Only Aaron Burkart, fifth in Norway with a C2 Super 1600, has chosen to play his joker and give Rally Portugal a miss. For the other seven drivers in the C2 Junior Experience, the season starts here.
Portugal is the second rally on the Junior calendar and also the first gravel event, as well as being an entirely unknown quantity for everyone. After a five-year absence, Portugal only makes its return to the FIA World Championship this season. The Junior crews will face a tough task, tackling 18 special stages and nearly 1000 kilometres through the heart of the Algarve, in the area around Faro in the south of Portugal.
With 357.10 kilometres of special stages, this rally will be far from easy. «We have very little information to go on about the event, » said Yves Matton, Citroen Sport’s Customer Competitions manager. « Our only experience of it comes from Dani Sordo, who drove the rally twice in 2005 and 2006. We know that if there is bad weather, the surfaces are likely to be very difficult and extremely slippery. If it’s dry though, the rally should be quite smoot. »
Two Citroen C2 Super 1600 cars and five Citroen C2-R2s will mark the real start of this year’s C2 Junior Experience on Thursday night, at the spectator superspecial held in the Algarve Stadium close to Faro. Shaun Gallagher, who finished eighth in Norway as the only C2-R2 driver, now faces tough opposition from Raphael Auquier, Gilles Schammel, Stefano Benoni and Dominique Rebout. Their biggest motivation will be to try and close down the points gap that Gallagher opened out in Norway, aiming for the coveted end of year prize awarded to the highest-placed C2-R2 driver.
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