SS5: Ketomaa fears Breen is too fast

Rally Liepāja-Ventspils - News after SS5

By Franck Drui

2 February 2013 - 10:40
SS5: Ketomaa fears Breen is too fast

Jari Ketomaa has conceded that he’s struggling to catch Craig Breen in the battle for victory on round two of the FIA European Rally Championship in Latvia.

Ketomaa is now 10.7s behind Craig Breen, who made it five stage wins out of five on Rally Liepāja-Ventspils despite striking a large rock midway through the 16.88-kilometre Volkswagen 2 stage.

“Craig is doing very, very well and I can’t go much faster,” said Ketomaa, who was 0.6s slower than Breen at the wheel of his Ford Fiesta RRC. “I am struggling with the turning on the car and it’s too soft for this amount of grip.”

Breen, meanwhile, said he feared he’d picked up a front-right puncture following his incident. “In the middle I hit a big stone or a rock and thought I had a puncture,” said the Peugeot Rally Academy-Saintéloc ace. “I didn’t have the confidence after that and dropped a few good seconds.”

François Delecour continues to be hamstrung by his decision to select a short-ratio gearbox for his debut in Latvia, which is affecting his outright speed. He was sixth fastest, 11.3s down on stage winner Breen. “We were 15s on the limiter, we have no choice we didn’t do any test and it’s like that,” said the French legend.

Vytautas Švedas continues to press on in the ERC Production Car Cup even though he’s driving “carefully” in order to preserve his tyres over this morning’s three stages. The Lithuanian was 4.4s slower than Alexey Lukyanuk, who now tops the showroom division by 38.1s.

Czech privateer Jan Černy said he was too careful in the opening kilometres of the stage in his ŠKODA Fabia Super 2000, while Siim Plangi said his Mitsubishi Lancer’s tyre pressures were too low.

The action resumes with stage six, Neste Oil 1, which goes live at 11:55hrs.

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