The brand new Citroën C2R2 Cup rally cars turned a wheel in anger for the first time at last weekend’s Pirelli International Rally, with Welsh rookie Jason Pritchard scooping the honours in his first full season of competition.

The Citroën C2R2 Cup is a new-for-2007 one-make rally championship set up by Simon Preston, director of official Citroën Sport dealer, Total Motorsport Solutions, and previously organiser of the similar Peugeot 206 Cup.

The Cup runs alongside all 6 events on the prestigious British Rally Championship’s calendar, and has been designed to nurture young, new British rallying talent by creating a level playing field, as each driver pilots an identical version of Citroën’s diminutive, but agile, C2 car.

The front-wheel drive rally cars are road-legal C2s fitted with a kit supplied by TMS, and boast 185bhp and a five-speed sequential gearbox.

Competitors in the C2R2 Cup are eligible to score points and cash awards in the R2 class of the BRC, as well as the chance to be selected as a Pirelli Star Driver, which gives participants the opportunity to win a top BRC drive in 2008.

In addition, the driver crowned C2R2 Cup champion at the end of the ’07 season will win a test in the full-specification C2 S1600 rally car on which the C2R2 machine is based.

Powys-based driver Pritchard, 18, co-driven by the experienced Martin Jones, only started rallying in December 2005, but a mature, restrained drive saw him take the C2 win, and second overall in the R2 class of the rally, while many of his rivals tried a little too hard!

C2R2 Cup organiser Simon Preston said: “I was very pleased with the way the championship started – there was not a single mechanical failure that was down to poor product.  A lot of the drivers went out all guns blazing but you can’t do that in a brand new car that you’ve never rallied before, and the way Jason went about the job was very mature, absolutely the right way.”

The second round of the C2R2 Cup will be held at the famous Jim Clark International Rally in Scotland, on May 25/26.