It has been a successful and historic day for MRF Tyres as they took a top 10 in class on their first WRC stage in a M-Sport Fiesta R5 at WRC Rally Italia Sardegna.
It was a time that impressed the MRF team and sets them up for a strong weekend.
Gaurav Gill, with experienced co-driver Glenn Macneall, impressed with his time on the first stage, and sits in 10th place in RC2, the class for all R5 cars, after the first special stage.
The stage was wet after much of the island experienced rain during the afternoon.
Gill put in a time of 2:13.4 on the 2km stage, running early on the road due to the fact they are running as non-priority drivers.
“It was a reverse order today so we were cleaning the stage for everybody else,” Gill said.
The MRF Tyres M-Sport Fiesta R5 travels through the water splash on SS1 in WRC Rally Italia Sardegna .
“We were trying to understand how the car works, there is a massive jump in there and I was trying to figure out how fast to take it.
“It was quite wet, we didn’t realise how wet it would be. There was a lot of standing water in there.
"It is a decent time. We have three more days to go, we are top 10 right now so it is a good day to start.”
The stage came after Shakedown this morning, where Gill and Macneall put in three runs in the wet.
“We had three good runs. I was quite satisfied with the grip levels and I was satisfied with my drive,” Gill said.
“I am looking forward to the rest of the rally as that was a good reference to how the actual stages will be on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.”
Day two of Rally Italia Sardegna gets underway at 8:33am with the 22.12km Tula test. Gill and Macneall will tackle the eight tests in their RC2 class M-Sport Fiesta R5.
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