There was a glorious welcome home at Dovenby for the WRC team members of M-Sport, celebrating their 1st and 3rd result against strong opposition from Citroen, Hyundai and Toyota.  

M-Sport celebrated their Monte Carlo Rally win with the whole team at Dovenby Hall.This was six years after the opening rally of the last WRC formula, when Fords finished 1-2-3 in Monte Carlo, when their only opposition had come from Citroen.

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After 20 years of faithful rallying in Ford Escorts, 59-year old Mats Jonsson moves on and has acquired the highly successful Skoda Fabia WRC (originally a 2003 factory test car) rallied last year by PG Andersson.

Mats won the WRC Swedish Rally in 1992 and 1993, and nine times won the premier category in the national Swedish championship.

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Fabia R5 driver Teemu Asunmaa snatched a last stage victory on the unusually mild Arctic Rally in Northern Finland, from the Peugeot 208 T16 4 of Juha Salo.  

Salo lost because of a broken lambda sensor, which cut power on two last stages, particularly on the last stage, when the difference to Asunmaa doubled in the last eight kilometres.

It was Asunmass’ first event in an R5 car, while visitors Yazeed Al Rajhi and Pierre-Louis Loubet both went off the road.

- R2 winner Emil Lindholm took 8 out of 10 stage victories. He is the son of Basti, who previously drove the two last seasons in the Audi TT Cup in Germany, where he finished sixth.

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One week after the Swedish Rally, Hyundai WRC driver, Thierry Neuville, is to compete in the Legend Boucles de Bastogne 2017 (formerly the Boucles de Spa) in a Group 4 Porsche run by Bernard Munster.

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Ostberg Finnskog RallyMads Ostberg won the Finnskog Rally in a Fiesta R5.The official explanation from Citroen after both their 2017 cars went of the road in the opening three special stages was:

“We had some difficulty finding the right settings for these very special conditions, never encountered in testing.  The C3 WRC is only at the beginning of its operation and we still have a lot of work ahead of us."   

No reason was given as to how Kris Meeke later crashed on a leisurely road section.

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Mads Ostberg won the Norwegian Championship Finnskog Rally for a record sixth time, his third time in a row, beating Ole Christian Veiby’s Fabia R5 by five seconds.  

Henning Solberg retired his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 6.5 on the opening stage.  Only non Norwegian in the top 10 was fifth placed Russian Nikolai Gryazin (Fabia R5).

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Renault Monte Classic RallyEmulating SEAT’s entry of a replica 124 Especial, Renault entered four 8 Gordinis on the Historic Monte Carlo, one of which will be driven by 1981 Monte Carlo winner Jean Ragnotti.  

These cars were popularly known as “Shoeboxes” on account of their angular design, while the yellow SEAT cars were known as “Taxis”, because they looked like Barcelona taxis!

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Spanish asphalt champion Cristian Garcia Martinez is progressing from his Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X to a Dytko Mirage Proto for 2017

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Plans to start the 2017 Rally Mexico in Mexico City have been confirmed, with a night time downtown special stage right after the official start in Zocalo square.  

Shakedown has been moved to Wednesday and the traditional opening short downtown special stage, in Guanajuato, will now be run in early evening Friday.
 
- Martin Holmes

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