In an action-packed day which saw the race leader change three times, Finland’s Juuso Nordgren moved into first place on the final stage of the first Leg of the Cyprus Rally, the fourth round of the European Rally Championship (ERC), and the stage is set for a thrilling final Leg, which starts at 07.30 on Sunday.
Despite a loss of turbo valve pressure and being bedevilled by punctures, Qatar’s Nasser Al Attiyah took the lead halfway through Saturday’s first Leg after the event’s early leader, Alexey Lukyanuk, crashed out on special stage (SS) 4.
The Russian had set the pace on the morning stages, pulling out a 5.6 second advantage over Al Attiyah at the halfway point, but he crashed into the barrier on stage 4 and Portugal’s Bruno Magalhaes, who is just 14 points behind Lukyanuk on the championship leaderboard, could see his chance.
He’d been driving steadily to avoid the rocks and had escaped the punctures that afflicted so many of his rivals – Al Attiyah had punctures in SS4 and SS5 and since he had only one spare in his car he had to cover the last stage effectively on three wheels. It cost him over a minute and he limped back to the regroup in fourth place.
Leading Cypriot Simos Galatariotis had a relatively easy day, clocking top-five times on every stage to arrive at regroup lying second, having been overhauled on the last stage of the day by Nordgren, who went to bed with a cushion of just 4.6 seconds between his Skoda Fabia R5 and the Cypriot’s. Magalhaes inherited third place, just 8.8 seconds adrift of the race leader, but he knows that Nasser is right behind him and has vowed to come out “all guns blazing” on Sunday’s final Leg. Only 48.4 seconds separates the top four contenders.
It was an eventful first day, with several drivers experiencing problems, and many commenting on how slippery some of the stages were. An incident on SS3 saw Andreas Psaltis’ steering break just over one and a half kilometres into the test, blocking the road. The rally was stopped while marshals moved his car, causing a 47-minute delay in the running time.
Alexandros Tsouloftas had been running well throughout the day, and started the last stage in fourth overall, his eyes set on a podium finish, but he was forced to retire on the final stage with a broken wishbone.
On Sunday the crews cover seven stages over 114 kilometres, the highlight being the Super Special Stage in the centre of Nicosia, which starts just after 09.30. The rally finishes tonight on Larnaca seafront at 6pm.
