ERC: Round 8, Barum Rally final summary

Pech wins and Campos takes the lead in the Points Table

Vaclev Pech, the 27 year old Czech Champion, recorded the biggest success of his career when he won the 33rd Barum Rally in Zlin, in The Czech Republic. His margin of victory over Miguel Campos was 1min 11.4 sec, with Jan Kopecky a further 41.7sec behind in third place. By winning this rally, Pech is also assured of becoming Czech Champion for the second year in a row, so victory for him was twice as nice. Campos has taken the lead in the European Rally Championship and now has 1080 points with Bruno Thiry in second place on 920 points.

The first day of the rally saw Thiry take a slight lead and then Campos edged in front to become the overnight leader with a 2.9sec advantage. Pech was third, followed by Kulig and Kresta. An eye problem forced Kulig to retire at the start of Day 2 and Thiry began to press, so that after 2 of the days 8 stages, he had taken the lead by the narrowest of margins, 0.1 seconds. And then things began to liven up. Campos lost time with a brake problem, Kresta went off and Kuzaj retired. By Stage 12, Thiry appeared to have a commanding lead. He was over a minute ahead of Pech and Campos was over 2 minutes behind after damaging the front right wing of his Peugeot 206 WRC and going off.

Three kilometers from the end of the penultimate stage of the day, Thiry broke the waste gate of his turbo and despite trying to fix the problem, he lost nearly two minutes on the final stage of the day and dropped behind Pech on the leader board, but was still 9.7 secs in front of Campos.

Everyone envisaged an exciting final day, but Thiry was unable to start his car in Parc Ferme and although he pushed the car over the start line he was forced to retire. For the top three drivers it then became a matter of protecting their positions and this they did without any problems.

The next rally in The European Championships is the Elpa Rally at the end of September.

33rd Barum Rally - Zlin, Czech Republic.
Unofficial results.
1. Vaclav Pech....Ford Focus WRC 2hr 34min 57.0sec
2. Miguel Campos...Peugeot 206 WRC 2hr 36min 08.4sec
3. Jan Kopecky...Skoda Octavia WRC 2hr 36min 50.1sec

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