Prime Yalta Rally: news in brief (3)

Škoda UK targets final Ukraine podium spot

Škoda UK Motorsport isn’t willing to settle for fourth place on the Prime Yalta Rally and wants its driver Andreas Mikkelsen to continue attacking Jan Kopecký for the final spot on the podium in Ukraine.

Mikkelsen was fastest on two of Saturday morning’s three stages in his Fabia Super 2000 and is now 12.9s behind his Czech rival with runs of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge qualifier remaining.

Pierfrancesco Zanchi, the Škoda UK Motorsport team chief, said: “We’ll try for sure to push on the first two stages and see where we are and then decide what to do for the last one. We are here to try to get a podium and we’ll try to fight for this. Fourth is not a bad result but on the podium and third is better.”

Of Mikkelsen’s performance on Saturday morning, Zanchi added: “His performance was quite good this morning, he won two stages out of three and was second on the other one without taking big risks because he was a bit afraid of a puncture. We were impressed with that.”

Peugeot calls for "safe push" from Bouffier

Frédéric Bertrand, the head of the customer racing division at Peugeot Sport, says he is expecting a “safe push” from Bryan Bouffier over the closing three stages of the Prime Yalta Rally.

Bouffier has closed to within 5.1s of Škoda Motorsport’s defending Intercontinental Rally Challenge champion Juho Hänninen following Saturday’s opening trio of stages and remains firmly on course for his second podium of 2011.

However, following his crash on the previous round in Corsica, Bertrand is anxious that Bouffier reaches the finish.

“He has the skill and speed to win but we face a big fight so the balance is between pushing and finishing, which is our target,” said Bertrand. “Of course we want to be as high as possible in the results but second place is a good result on a not so easy rally. We hope to see a safe push from Bryan.”

PROTON positive following early Yalta exits

PROTON Motorsports boss Chris Mellors says his team can take plenty of positives from its Prime Yalta Rally participation, despite the retirements of its star drivers PG Andersson and Giandomenico Basso.

Andersson, from Sweden, stopped with an oil pressure fault on Friday while Basso was withdrawn following the completion of day two due to an engine-related problem after running as high as fifth overall in his Satria Neo Super 2000.

“In all honesty the performance of the car is getting much closer,” said Mellors. “And there are still fairly easy fixes to make it faster.”

Of Basso’s retirement, Mellors explained: “We had an issue with the engine and we didn’t feel it was worth carrying on. It developed on Friday afternoon. We thought we could fix it but it wasn’t possible here. We didn’t want to do any more damage and stopping gives us time to have a look at what’s going on to make it work.”

Explaining the reason for Andersson stopping, Mellors added: “The oil pressure kept fluctuating and we’re not sure why, probably a relief valve. We’ll see when we get back to base.”

Andersson and Basso will return to IRC duty with PROTON on the Geko Ypres Rally in Belgium later this month.