Denis Rådström opened his 2019 Junior WRC Championship account with a heavy deposit of stage wins seeing off his competitors by a sizeable margin. Rådström sits 1m02.8s ahead of fellow Swede Tom Kristensson and a further 33.5s up the road from Julius Tannert.
Drawing first blood at yesterday’s Super Special, Rådström’s first stage win was hardly sizeable with just 0.6s covering the top four of Rådström, Martin Sesks, Kristensson and Ken Torn respectively.
Throughout the morning loop, there was an initial flurry of closely fought stages as this year’s competitors made their opening statements. Such was the opening pace the leading cars came close to some rally-ending moments, as Sesks, Kristensson and Rådström claimed stages two, three and four respectively. By the end of the morning loop Swedish rookie Kristensson had a 14.5s lead over Sesks in second position and 16.4s over Rådström in third despite his modest and cautious approach to the rally.
Rådström drove his all-new EcoBoost-powered Ford Fiesta R2 with confidence in the second half of the day winning five stages in row, including a stage-winning margin of 24.8s to second place Roland Poom on Stage seven.
Despite keeping Rådström honest into stage seven, luck was not on Sesks’s side after a technical issue forced him to retire and surrender his hard earned second place overall. At the end of stage eight Sesks had dropped to tenth overall and 1m54.3s adrift of rally leader Rådström.
Julius Tannert was consistently inside the top five throughout the day and drawing from his experience of two seasons in Junior WRC, he maintained a measured and consistent pace. This strategy proved instrumental as the German had moved into third position as a consequence of his competitors mistakes.
Kristensson’s lack of experience on snow and ice did not phase the rookie who, in similar fashion to Tannert, focussed on not over exerting himself to keep his mistakes on the stages to a minimum. The modest and reserved strategy allowed Kristensson to reap the rewards of second overall in Junior WRC at the conclusion of stage eight.
Dennis Rådström said: « I’m really happy. We have had a challenging day today and the stages have not been easy. The competition was quite close early on and we also made some mistakes but were able to recover really quickly. The new car is great and I am really impressed with it. I’m aiming for another Rally Sweden win and to do this I have a strategy and so far it is working. »
RALLY SWEDEN CLASSIFICATION, SECTION THREE:
1. Dennis Rådström / Johan Johansson 1:20:57.8 2. Tom Kristensson / Henrik Appelskog +1:02.8 3. Julius Tannert / Helmar Hinneberg + 1:36.3 4. Roland Poom / Ken Jarveoja +1:58.0 5. Jan Solans / Mauro Barreiro +3:04.0 6. Tom Williams / Phil Hall +5:07.2 7. Sean Johnston / Alex Kihurani +5:22.2 8. Fabrizio Zaldivar / Fernando Mussano +5:34.7 9. Enrico Oldrati / Elia de Guio +8:25.8 10. Martins Sesks / Krisjanis Caune +14:02.0 11. Ken Torn / Kuldar Sikk +19:28.7 12. Raul Badiu / Gabriel Lazar +36:54.6 13. Nico Knacker / Tobias Braun +40:27.5
Press release FIA Junior WRC
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