Loeb showed the mastery of his rally driving profession when he avoided the traps and pitfalls of a very rough Cyprus Rally to cruise to his fourth rally victory of the 2005 World Rally season, this time by over four minutes. Leading from the second stage to the finish, he out-distanced his two championship rivals Petter Solberg and Marcus Gronholm, both of whom abandoned in the early stages of the rally with engine problems. The Frenchman is now edging ahead in the Driver’s championship, with an 11 point lead over Petter Solberg and Markko Martin, but Martin’s third place protected Peugeot’s interests so they are now nine points in front of Citroen in the Manufacturers’ series. Ford had a special celebration: this was the 50th successive event in which the M-Sport team had gained points for this manufacturer. Brice Tirabassi won the PCWRC, the first win in the category for the Top Run team for 18 months. Tirabassi took the lead after his teammate Mark Higgins retired when his car was consumed by fire, a fate which also afflicted Loeb’s teammate Francois Duval, after the Belgian crashed. The event was marked by extremely rough conditions for much of the route, and by the effects of the reverse seeding and “Five Minute” rules. One of the most dramatic consequences of this was that both the first and the second cars to finish only attempted 16 of the 18 stages. This situation, however, did not affect the outcome of the event or the special emotion when Manfred Stohl, second in the OMV team Citroen, achieved quite the best result for a private entry for over a decade.

The Mediterranean “temporada” was now in full swing. Two weeks after the Sardinia Rally, the World Championship circus had moved its equipment further westwards to the island of Cyprus, where the slowest major rally in the World series awaited them. Normally this is also one of the hottest rallies, the two characteristics serving to compound the challenge of the event. This was the sixth time the world championship Cyprus Rally had been held and there were no surprises about the route, it was in fact exactly the same as the last Cyprus Rally, the only change being a different Service Park, and a decision to abandon the idyllic Saturday midday rest halt at Paphos. The conditions on stage 2/5, however, had substantially changed after post-winter regrading, causing the surface to become susceptible to rutting and also to dust. It was the sixth round in the series, and the third round of the Production Car championship.

Cyprus’ characteristics make it a real test for drivers, cars, and especially tyres. On this occasion teams were allowed two different patterns of tread. Once again choosing the correct numbers of tyres of the correct types could be expected to be critical, though the weather was expected to remain stable. Citroen Team Manager Yves Matton explained the challenge of Cyprus: “The consequence of being such a slow event is that the cockpit temperature gets very high, and the other problem is the ambient temperature can change quite a lot, so you never really know how severe will be the physical challenge! You just know the slow roads make the rally hard for the crews.” Citroen Team Principal Guy Frequelin later said: “This event is twistier, rougher and hotter than Sardinia, it is a very difficult rally. I am more confident with my drivers than with our cars...” To counter the anticipated hot conditions, Subaru team personnel were required to undergo physical acclimatisation training the weekend before the event.

From the other teams, the Ford Focus’ legendary reliability was expected to be an asset here. A special challenge being whether for the 50th successive event Ford could once more score world championship points, such an achievement would be quite remarkable. Twelve months on, the Peugeot team hoped to avenge the memory of last year’s post-event exclusion, the first time the Peugeot 307 WRC had proved competitive. This was the first event in Cyprus for the Skoda Fabia WRC as in 2004 the team opted to miss this event and the year before the team made their final appearance with the Octavia WRC. Gilles Panizzi was back again as a nominated driver with Mitsubishi, Roman Kresta was given another chance at Ford, Jani Paasonen was still on Skoda’s sidelines so Janne Tuohino was in their number two car again. The season was turning into a Loeb versus Solberg affair, currently standing at three victories to two, with Gronholm having led on three of the five previous events. At the start of this year’s rally the championship standings showed the French driver one point in front of the Norwegian, while steady results from Markko Martin put him in third, six points behind, two in front of Gronholm. Steady results had put Peugeot 11 points ahead of Citroen.

In the Production Car World Rally Championship, uncertainties about the plans for the Austrian all-rounder driver Thomas Bleiner, who had originally planned to make this rally his first appearance in the series with a Top Run Subaru, were realised. He never turned up. Also, former champion Karamjit Singh had yet to announce details of his commercial backers for this year’s series. PCWRC points after Round 2 were Arai leading Pons by three points. Since his previous PCWRC appearance in New Zealand, Toshi Arai had contested the APRC (Asia-Pacific) opening round at Canberra, Australia. Provisionally he finished first in the APRC category, but after the event he was excluded for technical reasons, leaving the Finn Jussi Valimaki to take maximum APRC points in his debut appearance in the series. The main non Championship entry news was that Daniel Carlsson drove a Bozian-prepared Peugeot 206 WRC, fitted with full active transmission, last used by the official team in 2003. This was the fourth type of car he had rallied in 2005, after Peugeot 307 WRC, Subaru Impreza Group N and Subaru Impreza WRC. Engine pairing rules: units used in Sardinia are paired with Turkey, engines used here in Cyprus are then to be used in Greece.

Marcus Gronholm was once again fastest at Shakedown, but the track used was very short (1.8km). Big surprise was that Daniel Carlsson, in the all-active 206WRC, was second fastest, over a half second faster than Petter Solberg. Carlsson explained, “It was incredible. The car had not been used for nearly two years, it wasn’t tested before the event - and it was the first time it had run on Pirelli!” Fastest Citroen was Manfred Stohl. Missing at the start was car 47, the Mitsubishi of Recanate (“ABA”). Although his codriver (Michael Johansson) had done the recce, ABA was delayed on business matters in Paraguay, so his car stayed in the Service Park.

Leg 1

“So far, it has been a perfect day”, said codriver Daniel Elena as he and Sebastien Loeb arrived at the midday Service Park. “No punctures, everything perfect apart from stalling the engine, it has not even been very hot - but it will be this afternoon”. Loeb’s lead was only 12.3 seconds in front of Petter Solberg, but it was controlled, nothing being risked. Not everything was perfect for the Subaru man who had taken an initial lead when he took fastest time on the first stage, “Two punctures, engine overheating every stage, clutch slipping...” After three stages there was a half minute gap before Toni Gardemeister came along, having inherited third place when Francois Duval was slowed by throttle failure. Gardemeister had suffered on the second stage (won at an average of only 54kph!) when the low slung Focus dug its sumpguard into the ruts while his teammate Roman Kresta had two punctures. Pirelli cars were having troubles. In the first four stages Markko Martin had four punctures, including one tyre which exploded, while Marcus Gronholm suffered unconnected troubles when a camshaft belt failed and the car stopped. “I haven’t ever known this trouble with one of our cars”, said Peugeot Team Principal Jean-Pierre Nicolas. Mitsubishi were having gearbox troubles. Harri Rovanpera had third gear jumping into neutral, while Gilles Panizzi had damper trouble, failure of third gear (“We never dared venture out of second”), and a 20 minute delay on stage one when an obscure electronic problem stopped the car, before mysteriously it fired up again. Daniel Carlsson, another Pirelli-user, had four punctures and his sumpguard nearly fell off, yet he was eighth at the midday service, while the best non-works driver again was Manfred Stohl who was lying fourth, despite gearshift troubles. Troubles plagued Skoda. Janne Tuohino had handling troubles, “I know how the car should react when I accelerate, but it doesn’t!”, while Armin Schwarz had an awful time on stage two when the alternator belt failed and the clutch was slipping. Finally the Skoda ran out of battery power on the run to service after stage three and the crew chose to withdraw. Another early withdrawal was Chris Atkinson with clutch failure. Gone was Balazs Benik in the ex-works Focus with a collapsed suspension, caused by driving on a flat tyre.

If one thought the carnage could not get worse, stage four proved you wrong! Gardemeister stopped to change a deflated tyre, then got baulked by fellow Finn Harri Rovanpera who was struggling with transmission troubles and excessive tyre wear, and fell back to 12th. Petter Solberg had turbocharger troubles and dropped a half minute behind Loeb, then he was behind Stohl on stage five and stopped with electronic trouble at the start of stage six. The Prodrive team originally suspected this was due to an unrelated electronic or electrical fault, but later it became apparent that it was due to the damage to the engine and turbocharger. Martin was going quietly, “Trying to stay out of trouble” and worked his way up to fourth, but the story of the rally so far was the continued progress of Stohl. When Gardemeister struck trouble Stohl was up to third, then when Solberg fell back he was second! Panizzi continued with three punctures on stage four, “Which made the handling very tricky”. Antony Warmbold’s codriver Michael Orr, accustomed to MERC rallying, said he had never seen conditions so rough, even in the deserts of the Middle East. Even Loeb had three punctures, “Stage four was incredibly rough. It was crazy”. His lead, however, had shot up to over two minutes, a lifetime in WRC terms. Kresta arrived at service on three wheels and his mechanics set about making the car good for the following morning. Overnight Henning Solberg was lying third, Antony Warmbold fifth and Francois Duval had recovered to sixth. After finishing all six stages, suffering more and more trouble, Carlsson had to withdraw at the fuel halt en route to the Service Park, his problem, having to drive three stages with a broken driveshaft. This had stressed the front differential and overheated the transmission unit, eventually causing hydraulic failure. At the end of the day Michelin cars held the top three places.

Mark Higgins led PCWRC from the start in front of Nasser Al Attiyah, then Toshihiro Arai and then Marcos Ligato. Gabriel Pozzo voluntarily incurred a ten second penalty, for delay arriving at the start of the first (long) stage, giving him more time from the car in front. “It was Fabio Frisiero, but we still caught him after 20km, later in the stage we caught Xavier Pons as well”. Pons had gearbox trouble on the first stage, using only first and second gears all day, then had a rear shock absorber break on stage one and baulked various drivers on subsequent stages, including Marcos Ligato. On the first stage Fumio Nutahara had a mirror image of Gilles Panizzi’s problems. The engine just stopped. Again it was 20 minutes before he restarted. Hamed Al Wahaibi suffered a seized shock absorber which then punched its way into the inner wing. Arai stopped in stage two with damage to the gearbox caused firstly by a puncture then a broken driveshaft. Pozzo punctured and stopped to change the wheel. Higgins was running far back in the starting order but was still able to lead the PCWRC field. Retirements came as Frisiero went off the road and could not get back, Karamjit Singh when a suspension tie bar failed, and Luis Rosselot when an engine piston failure. The organisers reshuffled the restart order for the afternoon stages so that Higgins had a five minute clear run through the stages behind Natalie Barratt. Higgins was curious whether his recent ill fortunes might be coming to an end. “What date is it?”, he asked. Friday 13th. “Oh. What overall position are we at this moment?” Actually, now that Schwarz has retired, you are 13th overall. “You never know, it might all just end up alright...!” It fact, it didn’t. On the following stage he noticed smoke coming from under the bonnet, stopped to check and found the engine compartment was an inferno. Top Run director Michele Agnello assumed it was the result of a leaking power steering system. Almost at the same time came news that Al Attiyah was out when a front suspension ball joint broke, so fourth placed Brice Tirabassi jumped past Ligato, who was in turn struggling with first broken rear suspension then broken front suspension as well, and into first place. Tirabassi had his own problems, his front suspension broke and he had to drive two stages with a broken wishbone. Villagra, had agreed to swop running positions with Errani and rose from seventh - to third! Al Wahaibi had more front suspension trouble, Pozzo damaged his suspension in stage four and set about repairing this so he could drive back to the Service Park to restart the following day. Second through to fourth places in PCWRC were held by the Argentine drivers from Cordoba, a personal comfort after the news of the previous weekend’s tragic air disaster at Cordoba, which cost the lives of many of their circuit racing friends. Despite so much lost time for Tirabassi, the Top Run driver still led the PCWRC category by just 11.7 seconds from Villagra.

The evening was then spent working out the various ramifications of the Five Minute (“SupeRally”) Rule. When finally the positions of the drivers who had declared a wish to restart the event the following day were taken into account, no fewer than 49 drivers had their cars put into the overnight parc ferme, a number far greater than the organisers had provided space for, yet of the 49 only 29 had completed the route. So many retired competitors returned to the event the parc ferme was not big enough to put all the cars!

Leg 2

There was a feeling that the toughest part of the rally was now behind them: stage one (and four) was the longest of the event, the first leg itself was also the longest in stage distance and the roads were not so rough. Prodrive decided not to allow Solberg to restart. Sand and gravel had blocked the air filters and presumably had been ingested, thus damaging the engine, and to continue would threaten the reliability of the engine which then had to be used in Greece. To retire the car at this point allowed the team, without penalty, to fit a new engine for that event. Gronholm’s car was in no better shape. The team put the car into overnight parc ferme. At the restart the car was pushed round the Service Park to get to the Peugeot’s depot, but with two bent valves and a rule banning the cylinder head being removed, the chance of getting the car to fire up again was impossible so he retired.

The “Five-minute” madness itself continued unabated. When the Restart List was published (top 15 drivers in reverse order, etc), Gilles Panizzi was shown as first car on the road, a handicap on this event, ahead of four drivers (Atkinson, Schwarz, Carlsson and Henning) who had not completed the route. An MMSP official said “There was no point even to argue with the Stewards. The Stewards these days are told to regard missed special stages simply as a penalty situation.” It seemed they have forgotten that the whole point of rallying is to obey the route instructions... The Super 1600 Ignis cars (Andersson and Wilks, who had opted not to tackle stages four, five or six) were given the same penalty times as those who had been driving World Rally Cars, yet the Group N drivers who missed stages were given a far more onerous penalty - FOUR MINUTES faster on stage four alone. One of the stewards explained. “It’s what the rules say this year. We are only doing what they say.”

The pace on the second day was now quite different. Loeb started with a two minutes lead but after three more stages his lead had increased to over three minutes. Manfred Stohl was going carefully, controlling the pace at which his rivals were catching up, but the margins were under control. After three stages, Kronos team manager Marc Vandalen reckoned they had lost a quarter minute to their rivals so far that day. “We are still just on schedule for second place, if we keep going like this”. Vandalen then admitted that the car which had already won four World rallies had a special present day secret, “We have to run heavier cars than the factory. In fact we have to carry about 30 kilos of ballast.” The reason is that the combined weight of the crew of Stohl’s car, for which the FIA gives an allowance of 150kg, is only 128km. (Ford and Mitsubishi have a similar problem. The Kresta/Mozny crew together weigh 134kg.) It was now all calm at the front. The conditions were mostly smooth and slippery especially for the front runners. Carlsson was horrified that his Peugeot had a lot of traction trouble, “In these conditions, our car is no quicker than Pozzo’s Subaru”. Tuohino drove most of the long 30km stage with a disconnected turbo pipe on his Skoda. Gardemeister had an impressive second best time on stage 9, 0.2s off Loeb’s scratch time while Antony Warmbold broke a rear anti-roll bar. Henning Solberg was engaged in a fight for third place with Markko Martin but lost time when he damaged the steering on stage eight. More trouble for Rovanpera. He hit a huge rock in the road which jammed the suspension and the force tore the wheel away.

Federico Villagra’s race was run when the second placed PCWRC driver turned out of the Service Park on to the highway and his Mitsubishi’s rear differential failed. He drove up to the start of stage seven but then decided to withdraw. Sebastian Beltran was now two minutes behind Tirabassi, but was stopping after every special stage to check his Subaru thoroughly. On stage eight Ligato had suspension trouble, like the day before, but got going and then had to change a flat tyre on stage nine but held third place in front of Hamed Al Wahaibi. Karamjit Singh was avoiding all the rocks, determined to finish, and conscious he had allowed the ‘05 APRC registrations to close without his name, for want of budget. “I don’t have enough money even for the PCWRC, and that is already worrying for me.” Pons retired for the day when the rear suspension pulled away from the chassis of his Mitsubishi.

Every day, something is new! The Stewards’ decisions were ground breaking. They checked again the interruption times for stages 11 and 12 given to second placed Stohl, and for the first time in memory they did not reduce the time given but INCREASED it. In fact it was an equitable solution, to safeguard the fairness in the race for second place. The Stewards were still giving WRCar time when the Ignis S1600 cars did not tackle a stage, but the Suzuki team was bemused when Wilks was given a “Five-Minute Rule” time for getting stuck in a stage, and Andersson a time some 12 minutes greater for actually driving the same stage. Overnight mechanics repaired Rovanpera’s damaged car, finding the sump had also been smashed in the impact with the rock.

Leg 3

46 crews hoped to restart for the final day - and they all did, but not for long. Ten kilometres down the road towards the first stage of the day Antony Warmbold came to a halt with a repetition of the same symptom as on the previous day, an oil pressure warning, and this time there was no reason to continue. Subsequent inspection showed the engine had ingested considerable quantities of dirt. Official retirement meant that he could fit a new engine for Greece without penalty. The final day of the rally is when the “Five Minute Rule” does not apply, so anyone wanting to be classified as a finisher had to complete the final six stages. Chris Atkinson, who had missed three stages on Day 1, was climbing back up the field, passing Brice Tirabassi into tenth place overall, but the focus of attention was on the battle for third place. At the end of Day 2, Martin was 19.5 seconds behind Henning Solberg; after stage 13 the gap was 7.4 seconds, after stage 14 it was 1.9 seconds. On stage 15 Solberg’s fly-by-wire motor failed and the engine cut out at a hairpin, losing a quarter minute and the chance of a podium place. Daniel Carlsson stalled at a hairpin as well.

Stage 16 saw Henning Solberg attacking, which reduced Markko Martin’s advantage to 5.1 seconds. Toni Gardemeister was faster still on stage 16 gaining his first scratch time since his time with Ford. Janne Tuohino braked a little late and slid momentarily off the road, then had two punctures and arrived at service with the engine merrily boiling. Gilles Panizzi’s transmission troubles continued “It felt like it was only two-wheel drive.” Henning gambled with TDE tyres (seen experimentally in 2004 in Turkey and Acropolis) but it was an error and third place stayed safely in Martin’s hands. Manfred Stohl, his efforts to finish second were beyond words. Codriver Ilka Minor confirmed they had a trouble-free day, the only damage being to her anxious heart! Ahead of them all Loeb gained his fourth win of the year, disappointed his rivals had to retire too early in the rally to make a fight of it.

In PCWRC, fourth placed Hamed Al Wahaibi dropped back behind Gabriel Pozzo and Nasser Al Attiyah after hitting a hole in the road, breaking an anti-roll bar and damaging the suspension. Marcos Ligato had two broken rear shock absorbers. Toshihiro Arai was pressing Fumio Nutahara hard, Karamjit Singh rolled and retired. In the second run through the stages the rally saw the end of Hamed Al Wahaibi when the steering on his Subaru was damaged. The service crews had changed the rack but then it failed again on the ensuing stage so he retired. Once again we saw the end of Fabio Frisiero’s efforts and on stage 16 Natalie Barratt retired with her car balanced on the edge of a drop. She sat in the otherwise doomed car for a quarter hour with her foot on the brake pedal before help eventually arrived. The top three finishers, Tirabassi, Beltran and Ligato, all completed the route as did sixth placed Fumio Nutahara, but the other four drivers collectively missed a total of 13 stages.

Martin Holmes 15th May 2005