Å KODA TARGETS IRC POINTS WITH FABIA S2000 AND WILKS IN SARDINIA

Having finished the last three rounds of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge on the podium, Guy Wilks is hoping to continue his excellent run of success when he contests Round 5 of the series, Rally d'Italia-Sardegna (4-6 June), in his ? koda UK Motorsport Fabia S2000.

Great performances in Brazil (2nd), Argentina (2nd) and Gran Canarias (3rd), and a 100% finishing record in his Fabia S2000, sees the 29-year old Darlington driver tied for 2nd with Jan Kopeck?½ in the drivers’ table, while Guy has also helped ? koda establish a healthy 31 point lead in the Manufacturers’ standings. Rally d'Italia-Sardegna is a notoriously fast and difficult event, yet Guy is confident he can produce another good result on what is expected to be the most competitive IRC rally of the year so far.

Guy has contested Rally d'Italia-Sardegna three times before, as part of his FIA Junior World Rally Championship programmes. He finished 2nd in class in 2004 and was leading the J-WRC category by over two minutes when a split oil cooler stopped him in 2006, while mechanical problems forced him to finish under Superally rules in 2005. Whilst he knows the style of the Sardinian stages well, much of this year’s route is new – with the stages to the south never run before and new sections added to the traditional stages in the north.

Co-driven by Phil Pugh, this will be the first time Guy has contested Rally d'Italia-Sardegna in a powerful four-wheel drive car – and he’ll also be driving a different Fabia S2000 to the one he’s rallied in so far this season. Having left the team’s workshop on February 10 to compete in Argentina, Brazil and Gran Canarias, Guy’s rally car finally returned to base on May 17. Whilst ? koda UK Motorsport could have fully rebuilt it in time, the team has elected to run Guy in a â€?fresher’ Fabia S2000 – the same car as Jan Kopeck?½ has driven in two rounds of the 2010 Italian Rally Championship (Rally 1000 Miglia and Rally Adriatico) in fact. The car will be prepared to Guy’s specific requirements and a 50km pre-event test is planned in Sardinia for Monday (31 June)

Rally d'Italia-Sardegna looks set to be the most exciting IRC event of the season so far, having attracted a star-studded international entry. The top three drivers in the series – Juho H?¤nninen (Finland), Guy and Kopeck?½ (Czech Rep) – will all drive ? koda Fabia S2000s, S?©bastien Ogier (France), four-time Italian rally champion Paolo Andreucci, Kris Meeke (UK), Bruno Magalh?£es (Portugal) and one of rallying’s top female drivers Burcu Cetinkaya (Turkey) will all drive Peugeot 207 S2000s, double Junior World Rally Champion P-G Andersson (Sweden) will drive a Gp N Mitsubishi, while Andreas Mikkelsen (Norway) and Giuseppe Dettori, who leads a large group of Sardinian drivers, will compete in M-Sport Ford Fiesta S2000s.

Guy Wilks: “Rally d'Italia-Sardegna has been a good event for us before in terms of pace, although we’ve also had a bit of bad luck with mechanical problems. The event can be quite tough on the car. You have to be very precise where you position the car on the road because there can be some large rocks just off the line. The roads really are carved around the landscape and rocks protrude out of the road where you least expect them – and where you don’t want them. So you have to be mindful of that and take caution.

“The stages are very narrow in places, but fast and sometimes quite rough. It’s not a rally where you can go blasting around carefree and try and set fastest stage time after fastest stage time, because you won’t get away with it. You have to use your head to make sure you keep yourself in the game by steering clear of punctures and maintaining car reliability.

“The opening 28 kilometre stage will be very interesting. You have to get out of bed early and go for it on an opening stage like that; you can’t sit back and relax, because you can lose so much time on such a long stage and spend the rest of the event trying to fight back. You can’t afford to do that on a round of the IRC, because the competition is intense.

“I’m quite comfortable with what we’ve achieved in the previous rounds of the IRC. We’ve remained in our comfort zone and not really stuck our neck out, but now is the time to start doing so if we want to win a rally. We need to push that little extra bit to start winning rallies and maintain our challenge in the series.

“We’ve got some bankers in the form of three podiums and we’d like to think that come the time we’re looking at our best seven results to count, our sixth place finish in Monte Carlo will be a dropped score. We have three good scores in our back pocket thanks to our podiums in Brazil, Argentina and Gran Canarias, so it’s a great position to build from.�

Rally d'Italia-Sardegna is the home event for ? koda UK Motorsport team manager Pierfrancesco Zanchi and his Oleggio Castello-based squad. He has done the event once as a driver (lying 2nd in Gp N to Gigi Galli in 2004 before breaking the steering rack) and three times (2006-’08) as a team principal – so knows the event extremely well.

There is one change to the ? koda UK Motorsport team line-up in Sardinia. Chief mechanic David Pelliccoili made a commitment to work at the Le Mans 24 Hour race before the IRC programme was confirmed, so in his absence he will be replaced by Marco Raele, who worked on Guy’s Fabia S2000 on Rallye Monte Carlo.

Pierfrancesco Zanchi: “Rally d'Italia-Sardegna is a special event for everyone involved in this project and we really want to do well. We have a good history of competing on the island, and whilst many of the stages are new to us all, we have a very good feeling. It is going to be a tough event and faster this year than before, but we have prepared very well and hope to fight for another place on the podium.�

Rally d'Italia-Sardegna begins on Friday 4 June with a ceremonial start in Cagliari at 20.00. Saturday’s opening leg, which features six stages – including two runs over Monte Grighine which, at 17.8 miles (28.66kms), is the longest of the rally – takes the rally north, via service in Simaxis (near Oristano, halfway up the west coast) to the overnight halt in Olbia, in the north-east of the Italian island. It’s a long day, with crews on the move from 06.10 until 21.00.

The second and final day of action takes place on Sunday 6 June, with a further three stages run twice; including the 16.13 mile (25.97km) Coiluna test. A sting in the tail comes in the form of the final three stages, totalling 25.73 miles (41.42kms), which are run without service. The rally finishes in Porto Cervo, near Olbia, at 19.00, after 12 stages and 135.9 miles (218.7kms) of competition.

Eurosport will broadcast live coverage from the two longest stages of the event, plus a recorded review of the rally, on:

Saturday 5 June

08:30hrs-09:45hrs: LIVE Stage 2: Monte Grighine 1

12:00hrs-13:00hrs: LIVE Stage 4: Monte Grighine 2

Sunday 6 June

08:30hrs-09:45hrs: LIVE Stage 8: Coiluna 1

11:45hrs-12:45hrs: LIVE Stage 10: Coiluna 2

Tuesday 8 June

23:30hrs-24:00hrs: Rally highlights