19 Spanish enrolled in 46 RallyRACC Catalunya-Costa Daurada

Salou. Costa Dorada. A total of 53 crews have been accepted to take part in the 46 RallyRACC Catalunya-COSTA DAURADA, Rally de España, penultimate round of the 2010 FIA World Rally Championship to be held from 21 to 24 October based in Salou and the PortAventura theme park. There are more entrants than in many other scoring rounds of the Championship and almost as many as in especially relevant events such as New Zealand and Sweden. We should not forget, that the Rally de España is only a scoring round for the J-WRC and not for the other supporting races of the WRC, i.e. S-WRC and P-WRC, which have much higher participation figures. The 106 drivers and co-drivers come from 24 different countries, with Spain having the largest representation (36), followed by Great Britain with 10, and Italy with 8. There are a total of 9 makes, the most represented being Ford with 18 cars, followed by Renault (11) and Citroën (8). Outstanding names in the entry list are those of the five works crews registered in the world championship: Citroën Total (Sébastien Loeb, Dani Sordo), BP Ford Abu Dhabi (Mikko Hirvonen, Jari-Matti Latvala, Khalid Al Qassimi), Stobart M-Sport Ford (Matthew Wilson, Ken Block), Citroën Junior (Sébastien Ogier, Kimi Räikkönen) and Munchi’s Ford (Federico Villagra), all of them at the wheel of Citroën C4 or Ford Focus. These 10 participants will be joined by 3 private WRC driven by Petter Solberg (Citroën C4) from Norway, Frigyes Turán (Peugeot 307) from Hungary and François Duval (Subaru Impreza) from Belgium, although it has already been announced that the latter will probably not be taking part. After Sébastian Loeb was able to clinch his seventh world championship title in his home event - as did Citroën in the constructors' championship - the French pairing will take part in Catalunya having already achieved their aim for 2010, offering an excellent chance for Spaniard Dani Sordo, who will be racing again for the French works team, to have the way open to show all of his quality without having to follow team orders. The aim of the 27-year-old driver will obviously be to achieve his first win in a world championship event. The Spanish representation at the RallyRACC is noteworthy: 19 crews. As the RallyRACC is the last event of the Junior World Rally Championship, which is aimed at drivers under 28 years of age, the event staged at the Costa Daurada will decide on the series champion between German driver Aaron Burkart (Suzuki Swift) and Hans Weijs (Citroën C2) from the Netherlands. There will be a total of 9 participants in this class, including two Spaniards, Yeray Lemes (Renault Clio) from the Canary Islands and Climent Domingo (Peugeot 206) from Catalonia, who will be taking part as guest driver. The single-make championship Ford Fiesta Sport Trophy International and the RMC Team will be having a total of 9 Fiesta R2 vehicles in the race. Group A, which gathers two-wheel driven vehicles and includes both support championships, has a total of 25 entries. The event has also a significant number of entries in both production classes, despite not scoring for any of the respective championships. As regards the Super 2000 vehicles, there will be the three Ford Fiesta driven by Xevi Pons (Spain), Henning Solberg (Norway) and Dennis Kuipers (the Netherlands), as well as the crew made-up by Albert Llovera and Marc Martí (Fiat Grande Punto). Group N has 15 entries, including Hermann Gassner jr from Germany and the Catalans Albert Orriols, Jordi Zurita and Eduard Forés, all of them with different versions of the Mitsubishi Lancer.

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