Portuguese in 8th place in PWRC despite incident!

It has been a case of good and bad news for the Red Bull Rally Team on Saturday morning at the Uddeholm Swedish Rally. The good news came during the first stage of the day (SS 9) with both drivers moving up a spot to fourth and 10th in the P-WRC positions respectively. Stage 10 provided no such joy however: Andreas Aigner (AUT) and Klaus Wicha (GER) lost a whopping 18 minutes as their Mitsubishi EVO IX careered off the road and into a ditch. Bernardo Sousa (POR) and Carlos Magalhaes (POR) also suffered as they span and lost 1:43 minutes.

The chaos on the roads was later matched by the organisers as stage 12 was cancelled at the last minute due to the dangerous conditions created by the mild weather.

While Aigner plummeted in the positions, Sousa was able to benefit from the difficulties suffered by many of the other drivers. He was thus able to recover much of the time lost by the spin and climb up to 8th place in the P-WRC after stage 11.

Swede Patrik Sandell (Peugeot 207) continues to lead.

What now for Red Bull Rally in Sweden?

Team boss Raimund Baumschlager: “Both drivers in fact lost more time in the next stage but the remote service has saved them. We need to change everything we can that will make the cars safer. Andreas’s car is not so bad, he just needs new tyres. We need to put in a new windscreen and control arm for Bernardo. Unfortunately he also has a problem with the transmission which we have not been able to diagnose exactly. We will try to keep both cars going however.”