Craig Breen’s sights set on Victory in Ypres
The town of Ypres in Belgium and its famous all asphalt rally will host round five of the FIA European Rally Championship this week (26th-27th of June). Peugeot Rally Academy driver Craig Breen has won on every surface in the 208T16 this year and will go there as championship leader dearly wanting this event in particular to be his fourth ERC win in a row.
Not only do rally fans the world over hold this rally in very high esteem but drivers too. Totalling just over 250kms, the farmland roads are typically slippy, narrow and lined by drainage ditches making up seventeen special stages around the historic town. This is without doubt one of the top asphalt event win’s that every rally driver wants on their CV.
After his three wins this year the Peugeot Rally Academy ace is naturally full of confidence but taking nothing for granted. Although his main championship rival this year Kajetan Kajetanowicz will not compete this time out Craig and his co-driver Scott Martin will have plenty of other competition from well-known ERC and WRC regulars including former nine times local winner Freddy Loix who will surely be on a mission to make it ten.
As usual the action gets underway on Thursday with a qualifying stage but for this event it takes place in the evening time. It’s not until Friday at lunch time that the winner of that shootout will be the first to choose their road running order for leg one so they’ll have plenty of time to make up their mind before taking to the stages in anger later that evening when the first of the day’s seven stages goes live just before 5pm. Those stages only account for just over 80km of the rally’s competitive mileage for the real sting in the tail will be Saturday (Leg2) with double the distance to tackle.
Although having a very positive start to his rally by qualifying second last year Craig picked up a puncture on the very first stage and despite launching one of his signature comebacks technical issues began to hamper the Peugeot Rally Academy driver which eventually climaxed on SS14 forcing him into retirement. Determined to take the win this year Craig said “I can’t wait, we’ve proven we have the pace to win here already and was it not for a little bad luck last year we could be going this time to do the double, it’s getting everything we’ve got.”
You can keep up to date with Craig’s FIA ERC 2015 campaign by visiting www.craigbreen.com or www.peugeot-sport.com
