Rally: SM victory for Carron, WRC success for Toedtli
RALLYE At the Critérium Jurassien, Sébastien Carron continued his impressive winning streak in the Swiss Rally Championship. At the same time, Jérémie Toedtli ensured a respectable success for a Swiss in the World Rally Championship in Corsica. Sébastien Carron took away his opponents' illusion of beating him on Jura soil as early as the first stage. First and foremost Nicolas Althaus, who was convinced [...]
Sébastien Carron took away the illusion of beating him on Jura soil from his opponents already on the first stage. First and foremost Nicolas Althaus, who was convinced he could do so at the 40th Critérium Jurassien around Saignelégier. "I feel at home here," emphasized the 2011 and 2012 winner.
If the champion, navigated this time by Frenchman Jérôme Dégout, was 15.4 seconds ahead of Althaus (Skoda Fabia) and 17.8 ahead of Ivan Ballinari (Ford Fiesta) with the proven Ford Fiesta R5 from Balbosca on Friday evening, he extended the lead the following day with five more best times in six stages. Only on the second and penultimate SS "Bally" could counter briefly. Althaus was left with only the best time on the last special stage and third place overall.
Sébastien Carron thus celebrated the eighth SM race victory in a row and the second in the Jura after 2016. In 1978, his father Philippe Carron had won the first edition of the Critérium Jurassien on a Porsche.
With nine R5 cars and Marc Valliccioni's Porsche on the grid, the places below the podium were also in contention. On home turf, Michaël Burri from Bernjurass was clearly faster than three weeks earlier in the Pays du Gier. This despite a short-term change of vehicle from a Ford Fiesta to a Citroën DS3 due to disagreements in his previous team. Pascal Perroud stayed on track this time with his own Ford Fiesta R5 and lost the duel with Burri by only seven seconds.
Ruedi Schmidlin and Erich Götte contested their first rally this year still with the Mitsubishi Evo X R4 and were thus behind the R5/GT cars for a long time. Due to two punctures, they dropped back to 19th place overall. This time Daniel Sieber listened to the announcement of Heinz Walther, who did his job well. It was not due to him that the man from Zurich chipped a rear wheel on the Ford Fiesta R5 in the penultimate SS. After all, Sieber had shown a clear upward trend by then with several sixth-best SS times.
As in the season opener, Thomas Schmid and Cornel Frigoli in the Renault Twingo R1 took a German-Swiss class victory in the Junior-SM. Nicolas Lathion (Peugeot 208) also won again in the R2 class, taking the sole lead in the standings ahead of Schmid.
Jérémie Toedtli could become a yardstick for Carron in Chablais
It is quite possible that Carron's winning streak at the next SM round will be ended by the man who was on the road elsewhere that same weekend. Jérémie Toedtli started with a Skoda Fabia R5 at the WRC round in Corsica. As in the Valais finale in October 2016, the junior amazed with his performance with this car. The Rally of 10,000 Bends, as it is popularly known, only included ten stages, but with the exception of the final Power Stage, they all had a length of between 17.2 and 48.7 km!
The man from Neuchâtel, accompanied by Frenchman Antoine Pâque as co-pilot, mastered these difficulties with flying colors. After a cautious start, Toedtli stepped up the pace, did not come through entirely unscathed, but reached the finish line in a sensational twelfth place overall. This resulted in fifth place in the WRC2 classification won by former VW works driver Andres Mikkelsen in a Skoda Fabia R5.
Toedtli is reportedly planning to give his Swiss colleagues a run for their money at the Rallye du Chablais in early June. Record world champion Sébastien Loeb, who also drove an old Peugeot 306 Maxi for fun in a rally in France a few weeks ago and beat all the R5/WRC privatiers, is also expected to start there.
Overall victory in Corsica went to Belgian Thierry Neuville in a Hyundai i20 WRC ahead of Sébastien Ogier in a Ford Fiesta. This means that all four manufacturers have won once each with their new World Rally Cars in the first four races. The World Rally Championship could not be more open - and thus more contrasting - than the Swiss Rally Championship dominated by Sébastien Carron following VW's withdrawal.
