There have been many great seasons of rallying in many different championships over the years. Whether it be for titanic championship battles, the quality of the field, the type of cars competing or the memories people have of them, the matter will always be purely subjective although most rally fans will have common ground in what they regard as some of the best rally seasons ever. For me, seasons that stand out among others are WRC 2001 for the epic title showdown and the "Battle of Britain", WRC 2003 for the battle between the establishment (Gronholm, Sainz, Burns, Makinen, McRae) and the young guns (Solberg, Loeb, Martin), and British Rally Championship 2000 for the memories of watching it on VHS and the awesome, howling Formula 2 kit cars that squared off against each other. However, in a similar fashion to the 2003 WRC season, one of my very favourite rally seasons ever was the 2011 Intercontinental Rally Challenge, or iRC. The drivers, the cars, the rallies and the championship battle were all exceptional, and I have great memories from it as it got me more interested in the European rallying scene. The cars in the iRC were S2000 machines, the same equivalent to the R5 machines that are currently being used in the FIA European Rally Championship, which the iRC became. The S2000 machines have almost disappeared from top line rallying now, but they were fantastic as there were many different manufacturers who made them, cheifly Skoda, Peugeot and Ford, whilst also sounding fantastic with high-revving, non turbo charged engines.
As for the rallies, iRC 2011 boasted a quality mix of established European events and worldwide classics, with 8 tarmac and 3 gravel events. These included European events such as Rally Islas Canarias, Rallye Azores, Rally Zlin, Ypres, Mecsek Rallye, Prime Yalta Rally and the Rally of Scotland as well as infamous rallies like Rallye Monte-Carlo, Corsica, Sanremo and the mixed surface event Cyprus. The drivers were a terrific mix of young WRC hopefuls and former WRC contenders, with several wildcard entrants competing on selected events. Experienced competitors such as Jan Kopecky, Freddy Loix, Toni Gardemeister and Guy Wilks took on young hot shots in Juho Hanninen, Bryan Bouffier, Andreas Mikkelsen and Thierry Neuville, with all four of those men receiving chances in the WRC after iRC 2011, with the latter two now being WRC winners. What I loved about iRC 2011 the most was how some driver's autumn and others' spring stages of their careers met for one titanic battle over 11 rallies. In the end, it was the rising stars that got the upper hand with Norwegians Andreas Mikkelsen and Ola Floene defeating Jan Kopecky to the 2011 Intercontinental Rally Challenge season by just 1.5 points. Skoda took a 1-2-3-4 in the championship with Juho Hanninen and Freddy Loix coming in 3rd and 4th, with Peugeot's Thierry Neuville, Bryan Bouffier and Guy Wilks came home 5th, 6th and 7th. So iRC 2011 is one of my favourite rally seasons ever, what's yours? Let me know! If you want to see more of my writing, please like my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
ERCArticles covering the European Rally Championship Archives
April 2017
Categories |