Gus Greensmith was narrowly beaten to victory on Portugal’s Rali Vieira do Minho by former World Rally Championship driver Xevi Pons.
It was Greensmith’s first competitive start in a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2 on a rally he was using as seat time ahead of his first WRC event of the year, Rally México (March 16-19).
Fastest on Friday’s superspecial stage, former Citroën and Subaru driver Pons led the rally from start to finish to beat Greensmith by 6.1 seconds in the older shape Fabia Rally2 evo.
Greensmith was third after Friday’s superspecial and then lost a damaging 21.4s to Pons on the next stage as first car onto snowy stages to head to the day’s first service halt 28.1s back, and 16.2s behind second placed Miguel Correia.
But Greensmith got his first fastest stage time of the weekend on SS5 to move up to second overall, and then took another 7.2s from Pons on the penultimate stage to slim his overall deficit to 19.1s.
And despite cutting into that gap even further on the final stage by 13s, Greensmith had to make do with second.
Correia ended the rally a further 57.4s behind the second-placed Škoda.
Second place however still marks Greensmith’s best ever overall result on a senior rally on his first start in anything other than a Ford.
