What a battle awaits us in WRC2 this weekend … Tremendous! Nikolay Gryazin and Mads Ostberg “met” in the last Therwoolin Boldogkő Rally, the first round of the Hungarian Rally Championship. The fight between the two men for victory was frantic to the last meter.
Nikolay Gryazin and Konstantin Aleksandrov were the winners of the race aboard the Volkswagen Polo GTi R5. The Russian duo is showing a brilliant level in the first part of the season, at the level of the best drivers in the world with the vehicles of the Rally2 category.
Of course, they didn`t have it easy. They scored four of the eight scratches, and lost time after a ten-second penalty and a puncture at the end of the penultimate stage. Despite this, with this victory, they arrive with their morale in the air in Croatia.
Unsurprisingly, Mads Ostberg and Torstein Eriksen were other contenders. The Norwegians achieved two vital scratches to get into the fight for victory. Proof of your equality with the Russians is the difference. After seven stages, the difference between the two cars was only six tenths of a second.
In the seventh stage, after the puncture of Gryazin and Aleksandrov, everything seemed to be looking up for the Citroën C3 Rally2 team. It was not like that, since a new puncture, in this case for Ostberg and Eriksen in the eighth stage, relegated them to the final fifth position, more than a minute from the victory.
András Hadik, current Hungarian Champion, also showed the level of the contest, as he was only ten seconds away from the victory aboard the Ford Fiesta Rally2, in second place. Frigyes Turán, another local competitor, finished third, also very close, in a Volkswagen Polo R5. You can see the complete classification by clicking here.
The next round of the WRC, meanwhile, will be Rally Croatia, in which Ostberg and Gryazin will meet again in the WRC2 category. Teemu Suninen -Ford- and Andreas Mikkelsen -Skoda- will be some of the toughest rivals in the category. All of them aboard different cars.
