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Breen’s ERC lead only 10.4 seconds after tough final morning

Just 10.4 seconds separate Craig Breen and Kajetan Kajetanowicz with four stages remaining on round two of the FIA European Rally Championship, the Circuit of Ireland.

Breen chose to fit super-soft Michelin tyres to his Citroën DS3 R5 for the morning loop but he admitted that the decision backfired on him on relatively dry stages, losing 14.7 seconds of his advantage over Kajetanowicz.

Last year's Circuit of Ireland winner said his tyre choice was too conservative rather than being a gamble, but denied being too worried, knowing he can be on the right tyres for the afternoon.

Rather than settling for second and the points for his ERC title defence that will come with it, Kajetanowicz has evidently been pushing hard for the rally win: "If you see our times from today, you know what the plan is. It is always the plan to push as hard as we can."

Northern Ireland's Alastair Fisher remains on course for a podium finish on his home stages in third. He hasn't quite been able to keep up with Kajetanowicz, but remains only 12.2s behind.

Another local ace Martin McCormack dropped out of fourth on SS9 with a fuel pump failure, and while his place was taken by Irishman Josh Moffett after a quick set of morning times, Jaromír Tarabus remains a strong fifth on the first rally of his 2016 ERC campaign. Jonny Greer stayed out of trouble running first on the road to rise from 10th to sixth ahead of David Bogie, who went off on the first corner of the day but is only 5.3s behind Greer.

With Fredrik Åhlin exiting on SS10 with broken steering, Tom Cave sits eighth despite leaking gearbox oil, and Joseph McGonigle is 10th behind Stephen Wright despite an adventurous morning that involved a heavy landing and subsequent back pain on SS8 and a trip through a local's garden on SS10.

Zdroj: fiaerc.com