Rally de Portugal makes hard time for Mentos Ascania Racing
Saturday stage of Rally de Portugal seemed to be less hospitable for Mentos Ascania Racing than Friday was. Valeriy Gorban and Sergey Larens got the best result - they took the 5th line in today's P-WRC report. Aleksey Kikireshko and Vadim Chernega improved their result and moved to the 13th place. Unfortunately Oleksandr Saliuk and Pavel Cherepin left the race because of the broken suspension and had to use SupeRally for tomorrow. It's very pity for the team - they started the day with the high 3rd result!
Rainy Saturday made the road very slippery and more dangerous. But the very beginning of the day brought the present for Ukrainian rally fans - Oleksandr Saliuk and Pavel Cherepin took the 3rd position! It was impossible to come close to Hayden Paddon and Anders Grondal - the leaders were very fast. Saliuk managed to be 15,3 sec ahead Richardo Moura. He kept his position till SS10 - unfortunately Saluik had a problem with transmission of his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX. Thereby the driver lost his priority and moved to the 5th place.
It was jus a beginning of real troubles - the crew stopped on SS12 because of the broken suspension and is going to start tomorrow under SupeRally rules.
Valetiy Gorban and Sergey Larens seemed to choose the best Portuguese tactics - the crew was quite stable during the first Saturday section and could avoid unpleasant accident. Only one SS was difficult for our crew: Gorban made a mistake at the first Saturday SS, but the crew could manage it and continued the race. Gorban had a competition with the Russian driver Dmitry Tagirov and could improve his yesterday result up to the 8th place (he was the 9th on Friday). At the second section Tagirov was faster than Gorban, but Ukrainian driver had a priority - time which was reserved during Friday's race. So Valeriy got to the finish the 5th. He became the fastest Ukrainian driver at Saturday section.
Aleksey Kikireshko and Vadim Chernega had a very ragged race today - they had some repair during the service and could take only the 13th position.
Saturday was very hard day for all P-WRC participants: Anders Grondal had a crash, Richardo Moura has an engine problem. So they stopped the race and the tot-thee positions were taken by Hayden Paddon, Benito Guerra (+6:35,8), Jukka Ketomaki (+9:23,5).
-source: ascania racing
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