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Production Car World Rally Championship (PCWRC) Rd.3 Infomation
Toshihiro Arai leads Leg1 with more than 2 minutes of margin
Leg1
Event News
9 May 2003
Leg1 started on Friday from section 2 of SS3. The sky was clear with temperature reaching above 20? in the afternoon, a perfect day for spectators as well. A strong wind was blowing around the service park in La Cumbre, dust was blowing in to the service tents of the teams.
Toshihiro Arai of SPRT fighting PCWRC started second this day. The first SS3 was 10.03 km short stage and Arai finished on 3rd with 7 seconds behind the local, Marcos Ligato (Lancer Evolution). Daniel Sola(Lancer Evolution)in 2nd place was only 0.6 seconds ahead of him. Before Arai started, the team representative of SPRT, Takeshi Ito advised him to "keep steady on the first day. Don’t push too hard, but make sure to progress ahead. There may be many happenings before the first service, but we should be persistent" Arai finished the following SS4 of 10.91km in 2nd, following Ligato. In SS5, Arai held back but Ligato on top backed off giving away the top position to Arai. On SS6 with 18.49km, Arai scored the best time of the stage, and gained 20 seconds margin to Sola in 2nd place.
Returned to the service, Arai said "I didn't push hard. I'm trying to avoid troubles. The course was very rough because it's after the WR Cars, and rocks are lying all over the place. The car has no problems. I am not worried about other cars, but rather keep my own steady pace." Aside from the fog lamp on the left came off after water splash, there is no significant damage on the car.
From SS7 to SS9, many of the WR Cars making manufacturer entry had many dramas, but Arai on Impreza got through soundly. Arai scored the fastest time on three stages, creating larger gap between Sola on 2nd place. But the team did have their scary moments. A news went out that Arai was imposed of penalty of overtime at the time control when he left the service. The organizer denied the information, but on the timing monitor run by the authority possessing the commercial rights of WRC, "2 minutes over / penalty: 20 seconds" were indicated. Later, the information was confirmed to be false alarm.
"I'm not pushing any harder than I should. I am adjusting the timing of acceleration and braking though. The track is really rough and hard surfaced, I want to be less damaging to the cars as much as I can. The next stage, we have already covered, and I assume the track being much rough. We lifted the height of the car by 10mm."(quote from Arai at the service after SS9)
This week in Rally Argentina many one off entries are made not eligible for Championships. There is a team from Costa Rica, making an entry with the modified New Impreza for Group N. However, they seem to be little immature in the set-up, the car had a trouble in the steering, rolled over in summersault just before the finish of the stage this afternoon. The car damaged the front largely, and the front screen was in pieces. Will they be able to start again?
Arai completed the remaining Special Stages soundly, and created 2 minutes lead to Niall McShea (Lancer Evolution) in 2nd place. He is to start the Leg2 as the Rally Leader.
Quote from Toshihiro Arai at the final service:
"I'm glad to be on top the first day. There was a stage with 4 water splashes, and the brakes were cooled there, and got a crack on the rotary. But that was about the only problem. There were 4 new stages today, and I was very careful, but tomorrow, all the stages are familiar and I know where the dangers are. I want to push harder on the stages we already covered. "
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| 1 |
Toshihiro ARAI |
SUBARU Impreza WRX STi |
2:02:53.6 |
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| 2 |
Niall McSHEA |
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 6 |
+2:04.4 |
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| 3 |
Daniel SOLÁ |
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7 |
+2:05.4 |
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| 4 |
Giovanni MANFRINATO |
Mitsubishi Carisma GT Evo 6 |
+2:11.0 |
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| 5 |
Karamjit SINGH |
Proton Pert |
+2:18.5 |
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| 6 |
Alfredo DE DOMINICIS |
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7 |
+1:38.2 |
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| 7 |
Ricardo TRIVIÑO |
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7 |
+15:19.4 |
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| 8 |
Fabio FRISIERO |
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7 |
+21:59.9 |
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| 9 |
Riccardo ERRANI |
Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 6 |
+23:06.1 |
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