Monza Rally: Rossi show, fun for "Bally" 🎥
SPECTACLE The Monza Rally Show was all about motorcycle superstar Valentino Rossi, who took overall victory for the seventh time. In the gigantic field of WRC and R5 cars, Puricelli and Ballinari from Ticino put in a good showing. The three-day spectacle at the Autodromo Internazionale di Monza consisted of three stages with five different special stages. Four SS [...]
The three-day spectacle at the Autodromo Internazionale di Monza consisted of three stages with five different special stages. Four SS were driven twice, in some cases even in the dark. The shortest stage was only 1260 meters long, the longest 44.83 kilometers.
The best in the best car
MotoGP star Valentino Rossi took center stage, with tens of thousands of spectators in the stands cheering frenetically. His sponsor Monster Energy was also a sponsor of this event, which took place in beautiful weather and attracted quite a few spectators from Switzerland.
The Italian was driving one of four Ford Fiesta WRC Plus cars, which had around 80 hp more than conventional World Rally Cars. Apparently, "Vale" also had the clear best car out of this quartet, because rally pro Teemu Suninen could not really keep up the pace of the local hero, who led from the start.
The Finn lost additional time due to a spin and ten penalty seconds for a knocked-over pylon (see video). He was only able to equal Rossi's best time in one test.
With a driving time of 73 minutes and 8.7 seconds, Rossi and co-driver Carlo Cassina won the Monza Rally Show for the seventh time. In second place, Suninen/Salminen lost 67.2 seconds.
15th place for Mirko Puricelli
Mirko Puricelli started with a Citroën DS3 WRC in the WRC16 class with 1.6-liter turbo engines according to current WRC regulations. The Ticino native and his Italian co-driver Matteo Magni finished 15th overall and seventh in class.
Lorenzo della Casa retired with his Ford Fiesta WRC after three stages and was behind Puricelli at this point.
Gigantic R5 class
With 64 (!) vehicles, the R5 class, which also sets the tone in the Swiss Rally Championship, was gigantically occupied. In tenth place overall, ex-European champion Luca Rossetti (winner of the 2010 Rallye du Valais) took the class win in a Hyundai i20, closely followed by Felice Re (VW Polo) and Andrea Crugnola (Skoda Fabia), who are familiar from the Ronde del Ticino.
Swiss rally champion Ivan Ballinari mingled with the many Italians in his tried and tested Skoda Fabia R5 and acquitted himself respectably. In one stage, "Bally" achieved the 15th time in the class, and in each of the two longest the 16th.
Afterwards, the Ticino native was quite satisfied with 32nd place overall and 18th place in the R5, even though Ballinari is not used to such midfield finishes.
Ivan Ballinari: "The result was not in the foreground. Nevertheless, we looked at it and set ourselves the goal of a top-20 finish. With around 250,000 spectators throughout the weekend, the Monza Rally Show is an important platform for the sponsors. My occasional co-driver Andrea Togni is a good friend of mine and, with the Voltice Group, my most important sponsor. We had a lot of fun together. I thank him and hope we can repeat that in 2019."
