Scott Pedder and co-driver Dale Moscatt have made a positive start to the latest Round of the World Rally Championship campaign, finishing equal sixteenth in the highly competitive WRC2 category at the opening Super Special Stage in Mikoljaki.
With the stage just 2.5 kilometres in length, and featuring a side-by-side format with a crossover tunnel and jump, Pedder lined up against Estonian Sander Parn. With a low setting sun causing all the drivers visibility issues Pedder began cautiously and clocked a time of 1m51.4s to start the event off on a positive note.
“It’s always nice to be back in the car and racing flat out in front of the rally fans, but the real action starts tomorrow,” said Scott. “It’s going to be one hell of a day tomorrow, 150 kilometres of stages and no service until the very end of the day.”
Moscatt agreed, adding: “It’s going to a case of driving smart, and mixing speed with staying out of trouble. After the test earlier in the week, and shakedown earlier today we’re feeling pretty confident we have the right combination of speed and caution to see us through.”
The biggest challenge facing Pedder and Moscatt will be the nature of the super-high speed roads in Poland. With the stages featuring a soft, sandy surface the cars running ahead of the pair will have already begun to create deep ruts in the road, and one wrong move could see the car skip out of the ruts and off the road, as Citroen’s Kris Meeke experienced when he rolled on the very first corner at today’s shakedown stage.
“The World Rally Cars really chew up the road, plus the WRC2 cars ahead of us on the road too, so we are going to have to be careful,” explained Pedder. “Just because the corner was nice and smooth during recce doesn’t mean it still will be by the time we arrive at full rally pace.”
To add to the challenge tomorrow’s first Leg includes two passes over the daunting 39.12 kilometre Stanczyki stage, the longest of the entire event.
Pedder feels confident though of the challenges ahead after completing a successful pre-event test at the start of the week, where he spent further time perfecting the setup on his Ford Fiesta R5.
“We had a really good test,” said Moscatt. “The road itself was quite fast and chopped out to be quite rough quite quickly but that's what we'll see in the rally, so it was a really representative test of what to expect. We were really happy with our settings and feeling in the car. It’s a good sign for the weekend.”
WRC2 Rally Poland Results After SS1
1. Stephane Lefebvre / Stephane Prevot (Citroen DS3 RRC) 1m46.5s
2. Pontus Tidemand / Emil Axelsson (Skoda Fabia R5) 1m46.6s
3. Nasser Al-Attiyah / Matthieu Baumel (Ford Fiesta RRC) 1m47.5s
4. Esapekka Lappi / Janne Ferm (Skoda Fabia R5) 1m47.6s
5. Karl Kruuda / Martin Järveoja (Citroen DS3 R5) 1m49.0s
=16. Scott Pedder / Dale Moscatt (Ford Fiesta R5) 1m51.4s
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