Cenedese wins in Sardinia; Vytautas Baranauskas takes FSTi series honours.
Mitsubishi's Moreno Cenedese collected a comfortable Group N victory on the Rally d'Italia Sardegna last weekend, the sixth round in the 2008 FIA World Rally Championship.
The Italian led from the start, while fellow countrymen Fabio Frisiero and Adriano Lovisetto were second and third, ensuring another perfect finish and clean sweep of the podium places for the Lancer Evolution IX.
"This has been a tough rally, but for us it's perfect," reflected Cenedese. "We were a little worried on Saturday afternoon. There were some strange noises coming from the transmission at the front of the car, but we checked it and there was no problem.
"The car was perfect it has worked very well for the whole rally. One of the things which has made this event tough though, has been the weather. No, we didn't get a lot of rain, but the rain was always lurking there, threatening. And some times the rain which had come through the night was making the road surface softer. Some of the roads were getting quite big holes in and some big rocks were being pulled out."
Both Frisiero and Lovisetto meanwhile were equally pleased with their podium places in Group N, although neither came close to the pace which Cenedese was able to find.
Vytautas Baranauskas was next up and fourth in the Group N category in his Ford Fiesta ST 150 - and that was enough to give him the honours on the first round of the 2008 Fiesta Sporting Trophy International series.
"We had a great weekend and it is good to start the 2008 season with a win on the first round. We had no problems with the car all weekend which is a credit to my team," said the Lithuanian.
"We also had no punctures on this rally which is a big bonus and the people from Pirelli have been helping us a lot during this event which has been a big help. We slowed down today because the gap was so big that there was no need to take risks. We will now head to Turkey looking for another win but this will be another tough rally especially with some of my competitors coming from there."
Francesco Marrone completed the top five in his Mitsubishi, followed by the Ford Fiesta of Burcu Cetinkaya, who took 'silver' in the FSTi series.
"I really enjoyed this rally and it was only my second WRC event so it was a big thing for me," noted Cetinkaya. "OK we had some problem but when things were working our times were a lot closer to the other Fiesta competitors.
"I am happy that my pace has improved from last year and we are now getting closer to the guys in front. I am hoping to get faster and I will look to improve on my speed in the next round."
Of the other Group N runners three others were classified with Giuseppe Dettori sixth in his Lancer while Koray Muratoglu's Fiesta and Raffaele Donadio's MG Rover 105 ZR came in eighth and ninth respectively.
"In the end things were good even though we had some problems in this rally," stated Muratoglu. "On Friday we decided to use a different setup to what we use in the Turkish Championship and unfortunately this didn't work for us and we had to retire with broken suspension on stage 2.
"Today and yesterday we used a harder setup and the times got much better. In Turkey we want to win for sure and we were able to make some setup tests for that event in Sardinia this weekend."
