New Zealand - Munchi's Ford WRT - FinishBoth Munchi's Ford World Rally Team crews have successfully gained more valuable WRC experience at last weekend's Rally New Zealand, round eleven of the FIA World Rally Championship.
Federico Villagra/Jorge Perez Companc emerged
as the superior duo for this event, finishing a well-earned eleventh position, equalling their best ever WRC result together.
Argentine team-mates Luis Perez Companc/Jose Maria Volta showed some of their best pace this year but were robbed of a top ten position on the opening test after leaving the road on an extremely slippery section that caught out many other drivers. This cost the crew over five minutes forcing them to battle up from 61st position after stage 1.
To their credit they made it back to an amazing twelfth with two stages remaining but on the penultimate, in a bizarrely similar manner, they slid off again due to a pacenote which was a bit too ambitious for the high speed corner. As a result Companc spent several minutes in a field searching for a route back onto the stage and finished the rally in 23rd overall.
Team mate Villagra had a fairly trouble-free run on his way to a well earned result. He used the opening day to learn the rally on his first attempt at it in a world rally car. A slight intercom problem on the opening stage impeded his hearing but a quick swap of helmets countered that problem until it could be rectified in first service.
Day 2 was again a learning curve especially with pacenotes which Villagra admitted he wasn't feeling as confident as he would like to feel with them. A small gearbox issue also lost him some time when he was forced him to use a manual gear change on the final stage.
This event covered 353 kilometres of stage distance over some of the most favoured roads by drivers. Rally HQ was based at the Mystery Creek Event Centre which is fenced by the 3.14-kilometre Mystery Creek super special stage.
Road position, weather and tyre choice together played a massive role in New Zealand and were a decisive factor in the rally's overall results which at the top of the leaderboard was decided by just 0.3 seconds between first and second place, a record for a single WRC event.
The next event for the Munchi's Ford WRT will be Rally Cataluyna in October. This will be round eight of their ten-event 2007 campaign and also their first tarmac rally of the year. The crews will be heading there in confident mood after a two-day asphalt test in Spain just a few months ago.
Source Munchi's Ford WRT
