Lukyanuk wins in Cyprus and takes 25,000 Euros

Russian Fiesta R5 driver, Alexey Lukyanuk, ended his unlucky season with victory in the combined ERC and MERC CNP Asfalistiki Cyprus Rally, his first ERC victory of the season and the third in his career.  

He led the event from start to finish, for half of the event heading Marijan Griebel, the 2016 ERC Junior champion who had won a prize drive in a R5 car, while fellow Fabia R5 driver, Ralfs Sirmacis, was third.

Cyprus Rally winner Alexey Lukyanuk in action.This was the final round of the 2016 ERC series which was already won by Kajetan Kajetanowicz, and expected to be the final round of the shortened Middle East series.  Best MERC driver was Rodolfe Asmar (Lancer Evo X) from Lebanon.  

Lukyanuk also won the celebrated Love Cyprus Golden Stage prize, run over a spectacular course along the beach, in which the fastest driver over the final stage of the event won Euros 25,000.  

The event started and finished in Limassol but was based in Nicosia, where the rally again ran a cross-border special stage which ventured into the Turkish controlled half of the city.   

Special feature of the event was the mixed surfaced nature of the stages in which all except two of the stages were run on part gravel and part asphalt in varying proportions.  The remaining two stages were run on gravel.  

The other main character of the event was the night time stages on the first evening, which included gravel stretches.
 
Lukyanuk was quickest on the pre-event qualifying stage which entitled him to choose his starting running order.  He elected to run first on the road, ahead of fellow Russian Nikolay Gryazin, who celebrated his 19th birthday.  

After the two stages on the Friday evening on which he led young Gryazin, Lukyanuk pulled ahead on the Saturday, the full Day 1.  By stage six he was already one minute in the lead and Gryazin had crashed, rolling off the road and stopping upside down.  

Leading ERC driver was Cypriot, Simos Galatariotis, who then retired in the afternoon when his lost a wheel.  Greek driver, Lambros Athanassoulas, dropped back with a puncture, but then his engine stopped on the drive to the downtown stage that evening.  

The short final day was made even shorter when the penultimate stage was cancelled for organisational reasons.  

Rodolfe Asmar won the MERC category ahead of Roger Feghali.  Khalid Al Suwaidi retired when his Fiesta R5 broke its radiator and lost its water.  

It is expected this will be the final MERC event of the season, with concerns that it may be the final time an MERC event will be held.

- Martin Holmes

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