World Rally Championship drivers expect this year’s Rally Italy Sardinia to be one of the toughest editions ever – with Ott Tänak joking it’s like crews are already on Safari Rally Kenya.
Since its introduction to the WRC calendar back in 2004, Sardinia has been known as the toughest – and slowest – rallies of the season.
But this year the challenge appears to have become greater with new tight and technical sections, rougher conditions and of course the daunting 31-mile Monte Lerno – Sa Conchedda stage on Saturday – the longest stage to run since the introduction of the hybrid Rally1 cars last year.
“Generally this year it seems to be quite rough,” championship leader Kalle Rovanperä told DirtFish.
“All the small parts and there has been some new parts, new stages, definitely really rough conditions. The long one and Friday overall will be a really tough day to be honest.
“Really rough parts and then of course opening the road for the morning will be really tough.”
Rovanperä’s closest title challenger Tänak added: “It seems like we are already in Safari!
“They are rough [stages], many sticking stones, a lot of vertical. I mean they are definitely more rough than usual already during the recce.
“This year also the stages characteristic wise are more technical, more narrow, quite a bit between the trees so in some places actually the trees are actually on the road.
“So it’s a tricky rally. It’s challenging.”
The weather is set to make round six of this year’s WRC challenging too, with rain falling throughout recce and forecast for the rally too.
“Obviously the weather conditions were quite challenging throughout the recce, which is going to make the rallying even more challenging,” said Hyundai’s Thierry Neuville.
“Couple of, well lots of new stages in terms of let’s say alignment of the bits because most of the bits we have done. One completely new stage which we have never done which is SS2 which is a very challenging stage to kick off the rally [on Friday], very narrow.
“For the rest, we have to see how the weather is evolving, this will be the crucial part and how we are going to manage our tires with only 12 soft tires for the whole weekend.
“If it continues to rain it’s going to be tough.”
That’s bad news for Toyota’s Takamoto Katsuta, who revealed Sardinia is the event he struggles most with on the WRC calendar.
“Personally it’s a more difficult rally for me here than Portugal so I have to be a bit more like, let’s say, smart to finish the rally and get experience and the idea of where I should improve because this rally is the one I’m most struggling with basically in WRC calendar,” Katsuta said.
“So I need to find what I need and this is my plan, but it’s going to be very difficult anyway for everybody.”
All of this unpredictability means that even the master of strategy, Sébastien Ogier, doesn’t have a clear game plan.
“It’s a rough weekend ahead,” said the eight-time champion.
“I think it’s definitely rougher than what I have seen in the last years here so I think it’s going to be a challenging weekend. Some long stages – Monte Lerno 50km we haven’t done that for a while and never with the hybrid car so of course a lot of question marks for that one as well.
“And the weather is very unpredictable! A lot of rain forecast for the rest of the week, it has been raining more or less every day so far so that might spice up the race for you guys! But for us it makes it complicated with the tire choice and the strategy.
“It doesn’t look so clear at the moment for the weekend.”
Rally Italy Sardinia begins with the short Olbia – Cabu Abbas on Thursday evening, which begins at 6.05pm local time.
